JHK’s Three-Act Play, Big Slide
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…
Visit the Big Slide Page to order, perform, or see sample scenes.

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. Here’s JHK’s holiday classic: A Christmas Orphan.

11-year-old Jeff Greenaway hears his mom and dad argue one night after an office Christmas party. He infers from their garbled squabble that he is an orphan, found in a willow basket on the welcome mat outside their New York apartment. Thinking now that his parents are imposters, he steals away to Grand Central Station and buys a train ticket to Drakesville, Vermont, where he intends to start life all over again.Print | Kindle | Kobo (Digital) | Barnes & Noble (Digital)

The European Union came up with a trillion dollar bail-out for itself at the dawn’s early light. Plus, each member gets a Latvian prostitute, gratis. The Germans will love this. It already goosed the Euro back above $1.30 — just when they hoped a lower Euro would help them move a few more export goods off the shelves. I expect that Mrs Merkel is already catching an earful. A few hours earlier, her coalition of Christian Democrats and free Democrats got their joint ass kicked in a North Rhine – Westphalia local election….

I mention these events reluctantly, knowing how averse we Americans are to news out of Old Europe, that boring backwater of sclerotic cafe lay-abouts, socialistic train service, and less-than man-sized portions of things that real men don’t eat anyway.

The question begging itself here, of course, is how Europe intends to come up with roughly a trillion in bail-out money. Sell Portugal to China? Cut Greece up into bait and catch whatever fish are left in the Mediterranean Sea? Frankly, I’m stumped. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul…. All the European nations are already so hopelessly enmeshed in chains of unfulfillable counter-party obligations that the bail-out might as well be a game of musical chairs played in the Large Hadron Particle Collider, set to the tunes of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The European bail-out is, in fact, an absurdity. I predict that the effect of the announcement will last all of one trading day on the stock markets.

The truth is that the imbalances of global finance are so grotesque now that the whole money system is hanging together with nothing but spit and prayer. I get rafts of e-letters every week warning of a supposedly-coming global currency — a companion idea to the notion of a one-world government. Both are idiotic fantasies. Events are taking the nations of the world in the other direction: towards break-up, down-sizing, down-scaling. Likewise, if major currencies such as the Euro and the dollar blow up, they’re much more likely to be replaced by more local bank-notes backed by gold than by some hypothetical Amero or Globo-buck.

At seven a.m. Eastern time, the European stock markets were zooming, and Bloomberg even carried a wonderfully mysterious headline saying Greek Bonds Rally. That was especially rich — like, who in the fuck is going to load up on Greek bonds now? Is there a pension fund somewhere run by such dimwits that they would sell their positions in the Goldman Sachs issued Timberwolf CDO in order to get in on the new bargain in ten-year Greek sovereigns? I hope those pensioners are prepared to spend what remains of their lives selling chestnuts from pushcarts on the streets of Oslo, because they sure won’t be clipping coupons in front of any World Cup telecast.

As if life in the USA wasn’t surreal enough last week. Once upon a time, the stock market was a place where people with capital went to look for productive activity to invest in — say, a company devoted to making soap flakes, an underpants factory. Now the market is a robot combat arena where algorithms battle for supremacy of the feedback loops. Thursday’s still-baffling fifteen-minute “crash” was an excellent demonstration of the diminishing returns of technology. People too-clever-by-half, aided greatly by computers, have now gamed the investment indexes so successfully that these markets no longer have anything to do with investment — they’re just about shaving micro-points of profit at high volumes by micro-milliseconds off mere differentials in… math! This is truly quant heaven, a place where only numbers matter and there is no correspondence to anything in the real world. In other words, last Thursday’s bizarre action was a warning that the American stock markets have flown up their own aggregate ass.

These algo-robots may be elegantly complex, but they are really no more than triggering mechanisms, and Thursday’s — whatever it was — glitch, let’s say, ought to be regarded as a mere preview of coming attractions for a full-on feature clusterfuck in which the putative contents of these stock markets get sucked into a black hole so vast that the trading desks will have to find a way to arbitrage infinity to ever again catch a glimpse of America’s receding wealth. And it could all happen in a finger-snap.

Why would anybody not heavily medicated stay invested in the stock markets? Well, the answer must be that they’re not. The few still hanging around are the institutionals with nowhere else to go, the pitiful pension funds or the pathetic college endowment funds desperately chasing “yield” in a world where once-sturdier instruments yield zirp-o — and these poor chumps are getting played and played out. The only other remaining marketeers are — you guessed it — the too-big-to-fail banks, the Federal Reserve, and possibly the US Treasury itself playing front-running games and algo stunts and black box buy-ups, and carry-trade rackets, and — let’s not forget — outright swindles.

We tend to forget that all this hugger-mugger once had a relation to real economies. The basic truth about real economies — at least the industrial-strength ones — is that they cannot be successfully managed on the basis of revolving debt in the context of no growth — and no growth is exactly the bottom line of the peak oil story so revolving debt is finished for now. Speaking of oil, the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper. Too depressing, I guess.

In the meantime, though, rest assured that whatever else is going on out there, credit default swaps never sleep.

________________

A sequel to my 2008 novel of post-oil America, World Made By Hand, will be published in September 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Press. The title is The Witch of Hebron.

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

The information technology gurus I know are oblivious to their roles in our headlong surge toward entropy. I worked with agricultural professors and Monsanto reps who had similar blind spots about pesticides and herbicides. We now have resistant weeds and blight that can devastate huge monoculture fields before we know what’s happening. The techno elite talked us into piling communications, the financial system, the power grid, and our medical records on this shakey digital platform they sold us as solid and secure. ACHOO! …and down she goes.

So I figure the military right now
is telling the President: Yes, ban
offshore drilling. Because they know,
at least some of them, about peak oil.
And what they want is for other nations
to deplete their oil reserves before we
deplete ours.

“last Thursday’s bizarre action was a warning that the American stock markets have flown up their own aggregate ass.”
I love this; “flown up their own aggregate ass.”
This is one of the most articulate concepts I’ve ever read about the market. And it describes exactly what’s going on on Wall street; total inbred clusterfucking, flying up their own aggregate ass !!!!!!
I was at a school related social function this WE (forced by my wife who is still naive enough to believe that things like school for the kids matters), and heard a yuppie bi—atch, laywer’s wife at that, orgasmically talking about the stock market’s “miraculous recovery” on Friday. This bi—atch, and all like her (and her sleezy lawyer husband) having virtually no true education but excessive “schooling,” believes everything they hear on CNBC and all that they read in the WSJ. They have no concept of Thursday’s event being a serious warning: they’re not listening, they’re just engaging in mental masturbation around fantasies of more useless bullshit they can buy, and trying to fly up their own aggregate ass. I wish had heard Jim’s above noted concept then, I could have pointed out that the market they’re all having orgasms about is just a bunch of criminals flying up each others ass, selling it, and claiming its business and (HA!!!) “investing.”
What a concept!!!!!
lock and load, and learn to aim….
WARDOC

Jim hits the nail on the head with this one. The EU, like the US, is just kicking the can down the road.
We are in the midst of The Great Unwinding. Turns out there is such a thing as moral hazard.
For those of us who saw it coming, it’s bittersweet. Friends laughed when we bought gold at 300/oz. Who’s laughing now? Protect yourself.http://www.thenothingstore.com

Very disappointing developments indeed. I’m mostly a German American with a little Irish and 1/4 or so British. The old German Americans I knew as a kid were real flinty and cheap. Running farms is Wisconsin those days and now was damn hard. I think there were 5 good years or so in the years I remember, I’m 53. I hoped the current main source of Germans would have been able to hold their fudge. But apparently not. So the free world (Euro and US) has blown its wad on hopeless gambles, that are just delaying tactics (at best). When the next reality check ‘comes due, who is going to get stuck with it? The poor and under and unemployed and just about all the rest of the US certainly won’t entertain chipping into to the Euro Trash pot or Uncle Sam toilet.
Well at least it seems Obama is making peace with the NRA/Pro 2nd Amendment people, from the Supreme Court Pick. That’s good, vote the rascals out, FINE! Anarchy in the street like Greece or Thailand, BAD!
Get out of paper wealth like Kunstler said. The hour is late, so pick some good people to work with and to watch each others backs. Tribal Society, here we come…
DJL

When I heard about the bailout, all I could wonder was, “Where is the money coming from?” It’s the most basic question, yet I doubt most people will ask it. They just want the markets to continue their “miraculous recovery (thx, Wardoc)which will most certainly happen after the opening bell in about 15 minutes…
But why? Is it because institutional investors want to run it up as high as possible (despite the lack of fundamental support) then take one last, massive bite of profit? Like I said, I don’t know much about how all this works, but as Jim suggests, the disconnect from reality is breathtaking.
Pilt

I used to say I wasn’t interested in preparing to survive the ultimate collapse better than the average person, because whatever happens, happens to all of us. But that isn’t really true. The reason most people believe green-shoots talking points is because if you haven’t lost your job, or your conservatively-invested retirement fund is still ‘sustainable’ then you think those bits of ‘news’ are true. And so it goes. It’s wise to learn to live on something more like a shoestring, and think about how you’ll eat if the tractor-trailers stop bringing factory bread from the distribution center.
Lynn10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill

I wonder how many parents of current college students are still waiting for their student’s financial aid award letters for the school year starting in the fall.
Those will very soon reveal the health of the college endowment funds, and the condition of the stock market.
I can’t see big bailouts for the colleges.
The next few weeks should be very interesting.

I try not to be paranoid about the Chinese and their hackers…but imagine a US-China crisis where the Chinese have nothing to lose and set their talent loose upon the servers of Wall Street.
Just put on my tin-foil hat. Better now!
Thanks, Jim, for showing us (as if we didn’t know) how fragile the entire system can be. I’m rooting for the Europeans, but right now they aren’t looking much smarter than we Americans have been. In Spain and England, two nations where I’ve traveled during the Housing Boom, the same sorts of dumb-ass living beyond one’s means prevailed.
Madrid and London weren’t that much different from Phoenix. And now the bills come due…

The outright lies flying around these days fascinate me. GM claims to have paid off their bailout “5 years ahead of schedule”. You bet they paid it off, using other TARP funds to do it. Like paying off one credit card with another one. Trying to trick the public into believing they are turning their business around, and I’m sure most people are stupid enough to believe it.

I see the writing on the wall as well.
These “Masters of the universe” think they have it all figured out. Out of money? Can’t pay your ever increasing and unsustainable debt? Borrow more money!
That’s the ticket!
My family and I have been preparing for over three years for the all out crash, and I finally and truly believe it will happen. It won’t be as a result of peak oil [although that will certainly contribute to it], rather I believe it will be a result of the world finally coming to the realization that none of these loaned will ever really be paid……..because they simply cannot.
Witness California, resplendent in her absolute and complete demise. The local and regional governments are out of money, having lavished unsustainable benefits on themselves, and all on the backs of the average taxpayer. When times were good, they spent every dime, saving none for a rainy day. Well it’s raining folks and raining hard. California is just the headliner here, as many more states are at the end of their collective ropes and about to hang. Police forces are cutting back, libraries and parks are closing and mass layoffs are on the horizon.
The general populace of the U.S. has lost their faith that their governments actually give a shit about them, and are poised to revolt.
This will be a very interesting summer indeed.

“the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper. Too depressing, I guess.”
If it’s depressing now, what will it be three months from now ? It will take at least that long to drill a relief well. Question: what happens if the relief well blows out too ? Or doesn’t work ?
The northern Gulf of Mexico is going to turn into a vast stinking toxic lagoon that will snuff out every form of life in and around it. The hurricanes will come and blast oily water all over every town and hamlet up and down the coast. Everything and everyone will reek of stinking oil. Maybe this is the way it all ends. Peak pollution.

Holy mackerel; because I don’t know how to spell oye vay or aye yi yi. I think there was a B/M mix-up again. The bowl movement once again landed on the taxpayers instead of in the toilet. At least some people can see through all the bullshit as gold is holding on at around 1190. A year ago it would have plunged $100 on this pathetic bailout news.

We have lived within our means and worked hard to reach the point where we have no debt, and from now on we will rely on the NYSTRS ( NY teachers’ retirement)for our income. Moving from NY to NC next month to live near our daughter, and hoping she’ll still have a teaching job there this fall. For all the relative security and stability we have enjoyed for so many decades, retirement and the “golden years” ahead look more like just one more “shitty deal.” It’ll be an interesting adventure. I worry only for the coming generation because the Great Unraveling will take some time, unless a Black Swan appears to accelerate the process. As T.S. Eliot said, “Things fall apart.”

One more thing. When I stated last week that Erin would have a cheerleader outfit on this morning I didn’t have the foresight (or inside trading info which the boys at the club had) or I would have known she also wouldn’t have any panties on today either. Line up boys, it’s another free ride today.

Wow, it is happening isn’t it? Last night we had our monthly local “Futures Conversation,” thinking of practical ways we can support each other through the coming maelstrom. Useful and enjoyable. We’ll want all the community we can drum up to meet what’s coming with some grace and humor.
Local cooperation will be an upside to a very real downturn.
Andrewradicalrelocalization.com/

If everyone in the Deep South is covered with oil from the expected hurricanes raining down, that would end the race problems if everyone is black. Perhaps there is some cosmic retribution at work in this, a massive, 21st century, BP-sponsored version of “Black Like Me.”

Andrew, How did the group gathering for “Futures Conversation” get organized? This is the sort of thing I would want to do in NC when I move there next month. Local cooperation may be the only way to a sane future.

Right now, we are witnessing a total distortion of globalism that have been working on a system that’s clearly not viable. You can count on things being rigged and twisted out of shape when people are doing everything they can to keep things looking like business as usual. If you try to keep track of everything going on it can make your head spin.
In the news this weekend they mentioned a leak into the waterways at a New Jersey nuclear power plant as yet another example of our faltering infrastructure, but our leadership is more interested in playing the Great Game than taking care of our own backyard. Free marketeers are encouraging transnationals from other countries to rebuild or infrastructure and get this, many of our global friends get govt. subsidies.
Now you hear the drum-beat by MSM that the social safety nets must be cut-back in the classic disataster capitalist modus operandi. They tell us that we are Greece in 10 years–so we better act now and cut Medicare and SS.(a huge money reservoir to tap into)
The IMF which is an extension of US hegemony places stringent austerity measures on any economy that falters and needs a bailout.
see fedupbook.com/blog/imf/congress-gives-imf-your-tax-dollars-to-bailout-greece/
The article poses the question: “How can a country that is over $12 trillion in debt allow Congress to loan $100 billion to the IMF? Where does this money come from?” It’s coming from the fed who is blocking any attempt to audit them. We are back-channelling a bailout to Greece through the IMF and while Germany plays proxy.
In response to a one world currency. Yes our leadership killed our manufacturing base, and are going for a US -engineered seamless banking system, but a country who is going for military and economic hegemony does not want a 1 world currency! How could a country with fiat currency want anyone else to have the same advantages of printing money willy nilly?
The one world currency is a dream that is moving further away from anyone who ever wanted it. Simon Johnson on MSNBC (Of 13 Bankers and Baseline Scenario website) was just saying that some of the weaker EU countries may have to drop out in order to keep the currency solvent. They have to standardize how they handle their economies, losing more sovereignty over time. I wonder how many countries want to do that.
What’s missing in the discussion on Greece in the last week is that they wanted to join the EU and had Goldman Sachs help cook the books in order to obfuscate their debt. They lied about their status and GS made it possible, so they came in under false pretext. That’s more the problem than anything else. What they didn’t factor in was that they were giving up their autonomy to run their internal economics the way they chose. Low taxes and big social safety net down not fit in with the Global free trade economics that the fits in, even if many of the countries are considered socialist democracies.
Since the 2008 bubble burst we are watching the rigging of the system in real time and its anyone’s guess how long people are going to put up with this.

What’s going on is ghastly, macabre. JHK has clearly thrown in the towel with the millions of other disillusioned, erstwhile Obama-lovers, now bitter that their saccharine prophet has utterly abandoned them to the moneychangers.
I thought things couldn’t get this bad this fast. The rabble are waking up to the unsettling realizatiion that their economy is irreparably gutted & their portfolios are possibly worthless.
I am crying for this once-beloved country. It’s gone. There’s a terminal darkness blanketing us, my only hope is that someone in a position of real power can’t stomach it anymore & stops the psychopaths before we obliterate the entire system of commerce.
I ALSO WANT BLOOD.

Kunstler readers may want to give this book a look:
Eaarth (spelling intentional) by Bill McKibben
His theme is that we should not be talking about what will happen to our grandchildren but rather what has already happened now.
We live on a different planet than we think we do. It cannot return to what it was.

Glad to see Jim’s got his (dark) sense of humor back. One of the more enjoyable posts lately, this was.
I’m surprised this headline wasn’t mentioned: Federal Reserve opens credit line to Europe ( news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100510/ap_on_bi_ge/us_europe_financial_crisis_fed
As if we don’t have enough failed businesses and states in this country, now we’re going to bail out the Old Countries.
Seriously, though, this is all for the good. It’s not the smartest way to bring about the general awareness that governments are not public benefactors, but it may be the only way to drive the point home for the Cheez Doodle-dazed American public.
Soon they will wake up to realize that government promises of universal health care can’t be counted on any more than their Social Security and pension funds can be. Our tax money and national credit rating was required to bail out the bankers of the European Union.
Take care of your health, friends and neighbors — You’re going to need it!HealthyPlanetDiet.com/

This post should get a lot of comments.
Sounds like most of you folks who have posted so far are in the USA. Here in Europe, where I live, things still appear normal, young people can’t find jobs, but most everyone else is still employed. Old folks who remember the 1940s and 1950s shake their heads, but the rest are generally content to trust the government for all good things.
That said, there is a long history of buying gold here. Any bank will order coins or bars for you. Premiums over spot are going up. See, eg.,gold4ex.be/servlet/javaparser?pgm=lst_or_new&lg=uk
Although premiums are still lower than they seem to be in the US, fear is picking up. As with the US, we have self-absorbed, short-time-horizon elites who did not see this thing coming (much less take measures, like enforcing their own rules) but are convinced that they know how to deal with it.

Moondog, I can’t imagine you regretting any part of initiating local conversation around coming changes – especially if the focus is on what you might do rather than looking backward at how bad everything is. Not that it’s not bad. The creativity, friendships, inspiration even is truly remarkable and I have the distinct sense that folks are just waiting for an opportunity to act in their (and their family/community’s) self-interest. Even the humble potluck will get the ball rolling.
A bunch of suggested “kickstart” actions are at the link below. You can follow the link on that page to some thoughts on the qualities of good invitation.
Go get’em!radicalrelocalization.com/actions.php

Poooof, now you see it, now you don’t, as those black magic cannibal banker magicians like to pull a few trillion out of their collective ……insert James Howard Kunstler’s famous phrase….. here. The artificial cyber world continues to spin faster and faster (now in 3D) going nowhere real fast. What’s left of this world is picking up the toxic garbage and looking for a clean glass of water to drink. One that’s not filled with who knows what, provided by some large institution doing it’s best to make more profit from a failed world oil energy system that’s going the way of the Dodo bird and taking us all the the edge of extinction. After WalMart finishes taking over the world and covers the last blade of grass with concrete the aliens will have to buy cheap plastic junk just like everybody else. May day, may day, DON’T PANIC, may day, may day.

Why stop at a trillion euros? At this point, why don’t they just loan themselves 500 trillion, or a gazillion? Why not just make up some childhood faux-number and at least be honest that fiat paper is being wholly devalued. In short time, its sole intrinsic will be tied only to how good it is for getting a fire going.
And why Latvian hookers? While we’re in fantasy land, why not just promise everyone a magic pony or a unicorn?

Who would’ve thought… the perfect voice for an expression of the hopeless bankruptcy of our civilization would be a sort of, more literate, less colloquial Stephen King.
True, the CDO’s never sleep and they’re gonna come get you. Where’s Woody Harrelson when you need him?
Just goes to show that whether it will be anything else or not, the end of human civilization, will definitely be “horror”.
There’s no denying the end of civilization,http://hurricanekatrinakaif.com
the only question was, what genre it will come in. Now we know.

This financial engine we call Wall Street is out of control – out of control because it needs a governor; (like controlling the supply of fuel) or money in this case. Just like any high-powered engine; Ferrari; Mustang; a Peterbilt truck; or a Mooney with a constant speed prop. The people of the United States need to get this behemoth under control before it blows itself up – and us along with it.

Great job numbers last week too. 290k “jobs” created…not. $1 trillion for Europe, fantasy money.
The front cover of Newsday this morning is about NYS planning on furloughing State workers on day a week. A 20% pay cut. That ought to do wonders for the consumer economy. And the oil keeps leaking into the Gulf.
2012 can’t come soon enough! I’ll be blogging about it all until the lights go out, I’ve got nothing else to do. Thanks for reading.
Aimlow Joehttp://www.aimlow.com

This from Jim’s Eyesore of the Month for May:“To me the structure looks like the unearthed skeleton of an architect who had died as a result of flying up his own bung-hole.”
Now today’s:“the American stock markets have flown up their own aggregate ass.”
So the theme for May is self-induced colonoscopy — I love it!

Money has evolved.
It uses our minds as a tasty, rich environment. Our minds create banks and CDOs and stocks and derivatives and money feeds on it all.
Money is so good at reproducing in the collective environment of our minds that it now uses computers as a secondary reproduction method to increase it’s reproductive success.
And look how successful it’s been! Where before there were billions, there are now trillions of cute new little bundles of Oy! floating around. Both debt and credit (and is there really a difference now?), they have taken us over. We work for them, fight for them, bleed for them. They hold us and our children and our world as hostage.
Oil? Ecology? Money cares nothing for anything but money. The richest and poorest of us are nothing but different form of slaves to a life form of our own making, which we don’t even recognize as such.

Brilliant screed, JHK!
I’ve called it “air money” for many years. As someone had mentioned before, all this supposed “wealth” cannot be matched by ALL of the material, tangible stuff [both natural and manufactured] in the entire world. So, where is this vaunted “value” that the asswipes keep talking about??
A large pile of congratulations for staying on topic for an hour or so, everyone! ;o)

This blog and all your comments make my Mondays the best day of the week! Really! So what to do, what to do? Over the past 20 year I have been involve with and living in a cooperative neighborhood model called “cohousing.” I can not agree more that one of the most important things we can do right now, is to get to know our neighbors. Survival is not a solo experience. The more community we can surround ourselves with, the better. Reduce your expenses, keep moving to cash and learn basic skills we will need to support one another and make our neighborhoods safer and more fun to live in… cause long-distance travel is coming to an end for most of us.

“Likewise, if major currencies such as the Euro and the dollar blow up, they’re much more likely to be replaced by more local bank-notes backed by gold than by some hypothetical Amero or Globo-buck.”
That will never happen, even though it should actually happen.
The known bunch of Banksters won´t allow it.
Where would they earn?
How would they control the states and the people?
Forbid the banks to print money and you will have a free world.
But we need a revolution for that, we would need people who understand, may be it would be enough another Hitler…but this time against the right paople…

The truth of the matter is that the rigged corporate capitalistic oligarchy syndicate of mobsters have made the United States into a nation that whatever it touches turns into disaster.
The Gulf of Mexico will be forever gone, the economy is ruled by computer programs owned by the Queens of Bailouts, and the Congress is controlled by the Pawns of Payola.
The Brown-Kaufman Amendment was shot down by around 26 Democrats, along with Lieber-man-hole, and other Republicons, who all appear to feel that there is a reason why these mega-TBTF-investment banks are required in this economy, while over the last few years it has become very apparent that they serve no logical purpose. They offer nothing to the real economy, or the 90% of the people below the top. Their only role in this economy is that of predatory parasites, and a source of Mother’s Milk to the CONgress and WH who need to nurse from election cycle to election cycle.
The conartists still live on without restraint.http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Well looks like the “market” is continuing the swindle today,I suppose most of the unwary honest folks will be separated from their $ by the thieves who have rigged the system in their favor. On thursday the “system” failed the swindlers and so they had to declare void all the profitable trades that the little guys stumbled into,if you are going to invest in the market do be careful as the system is programmed to take your $ if you don’t know how it works.

All of you who think we’re going to slide into a sudden crisis where everything “locks up” are smoking the same crack the Y2Kers were. It’s just not going to happen that way.
Yes, the oil is already well into depletion and we’ve found and extracted all the good stuff, leaving us with secondary and tertiary recovery recovery methods in old fields and whatever we can come up with from smaller recent discoveries, mostly in difficult access locations. In the meantime, yes, we are kicking the can down the road financially, but we’ve been doing so since the sixties and will continue to do so since we have been for years in the world of “virtual money”.
I recall moving to Europe in 1965 and returning a year later. In my absence, dimes, quarters, half dollars were no longer silver and paper money which previously had been “Silver Certificates” with the wording “payable to the bearer on demand..one dollar (or whatever number of dollars) in Silver”, had been replaced by “Federal Reserve Notes”…payable to the bearer on demand “one dollar in your imagination”. As a 19 year old, even I new we’d turned an important corner and the old timers certainly did too and grumbled that the currency was “funny money”, not real, and not American. Europeans and other inferior cultures used Aluminum coins, but we had always been different…not anymore.
We will continue gaming the system. Quality goods will continue to be evermore scarcer and dearer. Other goods will continue to be “ersatz” and junky. Real quality of life will continue to degrade and real wealth will be lost to inflation for many people. The American Empire will indeed collapse, but it will happen in increments that conceal its happening from many people who will blame all kinds of scapegoats for their troubles. The unease that people feel, knowing something isn’t working right, will continue, but political shamans will deceive people and find “solutions” of a facile nature which will fail to solve the structural problems, but will kick the can down the road. I think Jared Diamond had it right with his analysis of how complex societies collapse.
It’s coming folks, but not next year, at least not in its entirety. I’m 63. My 27 year old son will live differently than I do, and his children even more so. Unless of course we have a geological event like Santorini. Then all bets are off.

Banks and Wall St. and the Fed create trillions out of thin air and then expect ordinary Americans to nicely pay their loans off at usury interest rates. Two Americas all right. 1)big banking and Wall Street with infinite free money and 2)American consumers and citizens who are enslaved economically, paying off their loans with wage-earned income, and 3)IRS taxing Americans on their wage-income. Meanwhile, banks just go to the Fed and get free cash at zero or very low interest. Americans get a mortgage (not the same as ‘home ownership’) and pay 3x the cost of the house over the life of the mortgage or buy a car and pay 3 or 4x the purchase price of that car during the life of the car loan (unless its at 0%).
The banks make huge profits on the backs of Americans. The IMF makes huge profits on the backs of countries in trouble, such as in Greece, and in the past Chile and Argentina. Soon, the IMF will be telling the U.S. what to do—and wait for your pension money to be seized or dramatically devalued.
I don’t expect U.S. citizens (called by our government as either ‘consumers’ or ‘possible terrorists,’) to catch on to the scam until it is too late.

…when I first saw the title, I thought for one blissful moment that JHK was giving away free CHICKEN chicks… guess you can tell what is on My mind 🙂
have you noted that GS did not have ONE losing day in the last quarter? Not one! Miracles happen when one is doing God’s work, I presume… (ZeroHedge has an article).
The relationship between the economic growth – peak oil/energy – financial-gimmickry-making-up-for-lack-of-growth is fascinating and complex, and I do feel it is the key to why we humans are going to be unable to blow bubbles much longer – growth is over, even holding even is hard, and we are going into depression no matter how clever or hardworking or truly desperate we are not to, because we can no longer grow energy input, especially on an Energy In to Energy Out basis. As a younger woman, I thought that environmental degradation or over-population were going to do us in, but these have proven manageable as long as one has enough energy to throw at them. Worldwide peak oil is the key to why this crisis is not going away Now (when it has been successfully held at bay in the past), and attempts to medicate our debt with debt have a strong likelihood of making the fall harder, if only because we could have spent some of that time and energy scaling down instead of ramping up.

Greetings,
I am watching the U.S. Stock Market “soar” (currently up 352 points)on the news of the European Bailout. Frankly, it makes no sense to me but the people around me are cheering like it is the second coming.
What frightens me more is the simple fact that the vast majority of people believe this cr*p. Even after all that has happened, they still believe.
Are we that gullible? If so, what will the people believe when it all comes crashing down? Somebody is going to be blamed for all this and the people will unleash genocide upon them when the six packs and Sunday NFL cease to be.

What happens in 2 years? elections?
JHK says in 2 years there wont be enuff $ for the olympics!
From what i see of TV [only when im at the gym] maybe thats a good thing:
poker show.
wifeswap.
pro athlete arrested [so what else is new?]

“People too-clever-by-half, aided greatly by computers, have now gamed the investment indexes so successfully that these markets no longer have anything to do with investment — they’re just about shaving micro-points of profit at high volumes by micro-milliseconds off mere differentials in… math! This is truly quant heaven, a place where only numbers matter and there is no correspondence to anything in the real world.”
Indeed right —
Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street (Marije Meerman, VPRO Backlight 2010)youtube.com/watch?v=ed2FWNWwE3I&feature=player_embedded
I look forward to Mondays morning dose of reality check – you did not disappoint — the “black swans” are swimming by so fast now its getting difficult to keep up …

I believe Q wrote this:
“Therefore I figure if you’re growing a wide variety of F&Gs and you live in a rainy place like Tripp does, Mom Nature will supply about 890 lbs of that 1000 lbs of produce.”
Add to that the fact that air is composed primarily of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, in that order, a little plant alchemy to produce carbohydrates, and you end up with only about 2.5% of a plant’s mass being derived from soil minerals. They really are the producers and we the consumers. Both very necessary, along with the decomposers.
Return all your plant residues to the place where they grew; throw in your lot with the true biochemical wizards, the fungi; count on the birds to leave behind a little sumpin-sumpin when they pop by for a dram of water and a fresh worm; and you’re getting pretty darn close to a closed ecosystem.
In permaculture we say that everything gardens, and everything mines a little too. We humans just need to get real about how much of both we can sustain.
And if we’re mining all the world’s nutrients and shipping them to farmer’s fields to be accumulated by grain and bean crops, run through the gut of one of 6.5 billion humans around this joint, then deposited in a couple gallons of fresh potable water to be flushed downstream, to create eutrophic receiving waters and hypoxic estuaries, then hold on tight for a eye-popping finale!

Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Homescale Permaculture, recently posted to our listserv that he believes the planet can carry about 500 million humans living recklessly, or 1-2 billion living carefully. He also added that since we are incapable of controlling ourselves that the prior figure is probably the most likely…
Vlad, if your dream of a white nation in the Pacific northwest is to get off the ground you better tell all those damned darkies arriving in Spokane to look for jobs about your plans. Oh, and you’ll need to limit the white population pretty severely too. Most of the Pacific northwest is dry, cold, and not terribly kind to folks used to being able to drive to WalMart and Kroger. (And the part that isn’t is gray and miserable, perfect for your suicidal tendencies.)
Enjoy!

Mean Dovey! How the hell are you?! So sorry to hear about your bolting cabbage. I’ll work on why, or maybe someone here, like Nathan or Diogen, can help. Personally I don’t like cabbage all that much, but I’ll grow some for you if you’ll gather mushrooms from the mountains for me!
Goats and laying hens arriving Saturday. Can’t wait. We’re naming our goats “Briggs” and “Stratton”;)

The whole stock market reminds me of a past tulip bulb craze. Why do so many stay in such a rigged game? Why they would miss out on the gains! If they can’t make money on fundimentals, then there is technical analysis. Then again, why wait for the market at all? With computer trading, there is now the possibility of making money on simple churn. The more volitility the better! However, the small investor, even with an Ameritrade account, there is one big barrior to lots of people making money on churn. Only the big boys get to trade in real time and apparently they can even back out on unfavorable trades!
It’s a rigged game all right. But lots of institutions are still in it and the system will be supported until a sudden massive collapse. At this point,it’s essentially a world wide game of “chicken”.

A kid makes a mistake, they get spanked. An adult makes a mistake, they go to jail. A doctor makes a mistake, they bury it. A techy on Wall St. makes a mistake, they void the transaction and part of the recouped losses goes towards his hundred-thousand dollar, year-end, bonus.

Cancelled Peak Plans
My original post peak plans were to travel by train as Mr. Kunstler suggested as the way of the oil depleted future.
Then, I heard that the Global Warming was going to sink down all the roads, and have us all living down by the water like the salamanders and the toads.
Forget the train, we’ll be catching a wave in a boat. Again.
Then, I heard about the Louisana Liquor messing up all the water, and cruising up the Carolina coast, and have us all moving up on the mountain like them hill-billy boys and the goats.
Forget the boat, I’ll be riding the trail on a hoss. Again.

Everyone commenting smugly disses the idiots who believe that cheap oil and rising stock markets will last forever.
But they firmly believe in the system enough to live in dread of when the fake money bubble pops.
Oh my! What will we ever do? Take up arms and kill the rich? Move into a fortified armory with 3 years worth of beans and rice? Live off our acre of land, smelting our own ore?
It’s all fake money. Keep that part in your head.
I propose that we can cross our arms, stamp our feet and declare it gone. All debts void, all banks bankrupt, all funds lost.
And then get together and provide for each other’s needs sustainably without this particular exchange method.

Moondog,
I wish you luck. I wouldn’t be feeling very secure if I were retired and living on a teacher’s or any pension. Where do you think the money for your checks are coming from? The pension funds are tied up in the wonderful world of CDSs, CDOs, and other exotic derivatives. They will not be spared when the final ka-poom happens. It’s clearly erroneous to think that the financial unravelling will affect the next generation. It’s going to affect your generation, the next, and the next. Maybe, if humans haven’t annihalated each other during and after the great unravelling, it’ll just taken two generations to get back on its feet.
But, I wouldn’t get too cozy thinking that you’ve dodged a bullet if I were you. If you’re moving to NC, make sure you buy some land in a rural area (mountains), and start growing your own garden, get some animals (chickens, dairy cow, etc). Become as self sufficient as possible, and learn to live without your pension check!!

“Friends laughed when we bought gold at 300/oz.”
4.00 {“dollars”} an ounce is even better. And provides equal amounts of mirth. More for your “money” as they say.
Just hang on until there is no comparator; no denominator, or no medium but these two metals, and perhaps a couple others. The ratio is my friend. Do I hear 17 to one? The race is on…

By the way, I now have a very nice, albeit toothless, good ol’boy living in an old school bus in my yard, with his friendly, although very obese, wife. I believe that Cash and Vlad would hold them to be “real” people, because they are white,and handy.
He is fixing my barn doors, which were damaged in the inland hurricane, which was a “once in a hundred years” storm, that clearly won’t happen again for a hundred years, because the corporate media tells me so.
Anyway, he’s from Amish country, and he is using Amish metal doors to fix my barn.
According to him, the Amish don’t farm much anymore. They’re now into small manufacturing.
I don’t know how accurate his numbers are, but if the Amish are now producing metal as well as food, we will have a source when the ships from China are docked due to lack of diesel.

I predict that the effect of the announcement will last all of one trading day on the stock markets. — JHK
Here finally, a prediction we can wrap our arms around. DOW up 400+ today and down from here on out.

As a typical central bank, like the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank has the power to inflate the supply of its currency (the Euro). In the long run this will not save Greece from default, nor achieve much of anything except higher prices. But of course no one is thinking of the long run. In the short run what this means is that Portugal is not going to be “sold to China”

I quickly perused the previous comments and although I noticed that the IMF was mentioned in one, no one seems to have brought up the point that the U.S. is a participating member in the IMF. As such, WE (read that “the US taxpayers”) are on the hook for contributing 20% of the total sum extended to Greece. I am absolutely apoplectic! We cannot even pay our own outstanding indebtedness so, what on earth are we doing bailing out Greece? Someone correct me if I am mistaken here but I have been researching the actual payment of these funds to/for Greece and have come up with the inescapable reality that the U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for part of this bail-out in addition of the innumerable bail-outs we are sponsering domestically.

Um, I believe that everyone, with the possible exception of the editors of the NY Times and other major press outlets, knows about peak oil. They can’t talk about it, because, official spokesmen of the American view of things that they are, it might panic hoi polloi.
Hmm, what does Warren Buffet know? He spent $40 billion last year to buy a railroad. Interesting, eh what?

Jim, don’t plan on taking too much time off. No more lallygagging on the porch playing with the pet. Get a spare battery for your laptop, so that you can continue to write during any long power failures.
You, and your fellow taxpayers, through the 17% US participation in the IMF, now guarantee the retirement benefits of a lot of Greeks who want to meet members of the opposite sex on the beach before they need Viagra to realize the full potential of their extensive European vacation time. You wouldn’t want them to have to work during the month of August, would you Jim?

No china shipping because no Diesel?It will be more like no merchandise unless we we pay cash,no more credit,cash only,paid in advance.
Long before we whimper about no fuel,the Chinese will have their merchant fleet converted to steam turbines,running on coal,while we still be dreaming about high speed rail,no one needs or can afford to ride.

Oil is down from an 18-month high of $87.15 a barrel early last week as the European debt crisis undermined investor confidence in the euro. Commodities priced in dollars, such as oil, become more expensive for investors holding euros as the U.S. currency strengthens.

BIG GOVERNMENT GOES AFTER MOODYS

Moody’s disclosed late Friday that it might face a Securities and Exchange Commission administrative charge that it misled regulators when it applied for its license in 2007. Ratings agencies must be licensed by the federal government.

MORTGAGE DELINQUENCIES DOWN

The rate of late mortgage payments dropped in the first quarter for the first time since 2006, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion.

RECORD JOBS GAIN

The U.S. economy had a net gain of 290,000 jobs in April, the biggest jump in additional jobs since March 2006. If you remember, under Bush we were losing 700,000 jobs a month (the result of less regulation, lower taxes on rich, and “free market” economics. Under Obama we have seen a swing to positive job creation and increased manufacturing. Even the increase in the unemployment rate to 9.9 percent is positive because more workers re-entered the job market. “When you think about the force it takes to get 800,000 beaten-down people off the couch and back on the street looking for work, that’s pretty significant,” said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.

I grew up on movies where endless vistas of oil derricks and tales of gushers were a regular part of the storyline. Jed Clampett struck it rich just shootin’ at some food.
I guess folks these days are so used to off-shore rigs and technological miracles that they think nothing of the fact that BP is drilling three thousand feet into the earth from a floating oil platform a mile above the ocean floor. No one seems to find it astonishing that we’re having to go to such extremes for oil. No one is aghast that BP is willing to risk the entirety of the Louisiana coast, wetlands and fisheries. I have no doubt whatsoever that BP is as venal and thoroughly corrupt as Greg Palast says. But I doubt they’re stupid. They knew the risks; they took the gamble. Things are that bad. New oil is that hard to come by. Truthout says the Obama admin. has issued 27 off-shore waivers SINCE the blowout.
I’d say Deepshit Horizon is pretty good validation of Peak Oil–if anyone was paying attention. Even the most loyal of JHK’s readers may have the occasional doubt. BP seems convinced.
The US military is a true believer too. No section of the American economy is more completely and totally dependent on oil than the military. And as stupid, ignorant and wrong-headed as our “intelligence” services are, I think they had to have known the risks inherent in stationing American troops in Saudi Arabia, which we did beginning with Gulf I. We’ve been sitting astride the Gulf for nearly 20 years now.
A week of market reverses, a day of papering the crisis over with funny money.
My friend used to always sing the Dylan line “When you ain’t got a nickel, you ain’t got a dime to lose.” Poor people are always genuinely conservative. They ain’t got a gotdamn thing, so they don’t want to give up any of what little they do have. Including their illusions and delusions. Gonna be hell when we wake up.

We have been preparing for this, and have a community of 5,000 Portlanders standing by to deploy into fields for the summer crop.
We have been:
1) Preparing soils for organic farming:
The community has rallied and converted yards and larger acres into worm pits. We are redirecting restaurant food waste to feed the worms. The worm castings are rich and we don’t need oil to grow bountiful amounts of local food using this quick-fix method.
2) Creating / planting / tracking fruit and nut trees
The community came together this February and pruned fruit trees, saving the scions. Then, reconnected later to graft the fruit branches to root stock, instantly creating new food bearing trees (starting from seed is stupid).
3) We have connected all 95 Portland neighborhoods so everyone can trade, lend, and get what they need from one another. Find your neighbor who grows potatoes, and trade them for the tomatoes or garlic you grew. Or lend a wheelbarrow and they can fix your shoes. That kind of thing.
This is all easy shit – the leaders in this country are pathetic.

Thus the Small Man with the weird moustache is vindicated. He tried to warn us what would happen but we didn’t listen. He told the British they would lose their Empire if they fought again and they did. He told the West that we would become slaves in our own lands and we have. The Enemy was too clever – they have made the study of human foibles into both an art and a science. Bernay’s, Freud’s nephew, was the Father of the Modern Advertising Industry.
The Weird Man with the small moustache tried to warn us but we listened to the jingo propaganda instead. Chalie Chaplin come back – we’re sorry!

500 million huh? The exact number recommended by the Georgia Guidestones. Coincidence?
If the Northwest is so bad, why did you live there? And if memory serves, it sounded like you were able to grow alot in Eastern Washington. And what about Idaho potatoes? And the Unabomber grew them in Montana. He fertilized them with his own shit – something you have trouble doing. Take that!

Jewelry was given to Man by the Fallen Angels. They knew the lust that it would inspire in the hearts of women and the suffering that men would undergo trying to satisfy this lust – in order to satisfy their lust! Oh, the trap was well laid! Women are sex objects to men and men success objects to women. And gold, rubies, and diamonds are medium of exchange. Prostitutes all! Oh you generation of vipers!
What happens next year? Oh just that the Boomers begin to retire. You think that the system will be able to withstand that on top of everything else? Does anyone thing that their SS money is still intact?
Alas not! We have been royally rooked by the Jewelers! And 2012 is the next year after that. Repent now and be ready for whatsoever comes. Whatever it is, it will be worse than you can imagine. Thank God you don’t have the imagination I have.

All this oil just shows that PEAK OIL is not true and a lie. Just look at how much oil is in the ground underwater, it never ends, it can propel a trillion 1970s Cadillacs and a trillion 1967 Chrysler Imperials for thousands of years!
There is no peak oil, actually, there is the contrary, there is way too much oil underground in the sea, that you have to be careful to not let it all flow out.
The center of the earth is one huge ball of oil – petroleum, in case they didn’t teach you it yet.

Heaven help us all if there is ever a blowout from the wells that tap the “huge ball of oil” at the center of the earth. The entire surface of the earth will become a 10 foot thick layer of petroleum mousse. The aliens will harvest it in their space tankers when they visit here next time they are passing through this neck of the Galaxy.

AH-HA! You’ve uncovered the big secret. The center of the earth is all sweet crude. The castle at Disney World is actually covering a huge wellhead that will bring us oil forever. And the moon is made of chedder cheese, and at the bottom of the oceans: chilled Champagne! Let the good times roll.

Do you really think this economy needs “work” to operate ? Do you really think the USA workforce of 70 million “service sector” jobs is actually producing anything ? Aside from health care (and only a very few really necessary and important parts of it, therefore all the billions of dollars to insurance companies is fake work), police, fire dept, and schools, and some other things, the rest of the “service economy” is an excuse of “fake work” for real food and energy. This is because we live in automatic economies where technology does all the work, computers all the thinking and we are no longer needed to do much of any work anymore.
That is way a trillion dollars of bailout money can pop into existence for Europe and in the past for AIG, banks, for military adventures across the world, etc.
Check out:ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=171623
We really need only two things: cheap housing for rents and public transportation.
As I said often:
There is a precise intentionality in the USA and Worldwide not to ever mention BUSES. When you mention BUSES on this blog or other blogs/forums people always say, “oh you mean that crap I rode in Detroit”, or “that horrible experience I had in that monkey of Austin Texas (less mass transit than in Bangladesh)”, etc. They can’t even imagine that BUSES can be made luxury, high quality, silent inside and out, with private compartments, with scheduling through internet, with a Rolls Royce type suspension system, etc. They can’t imagine how much can be achieved by simple BUSES.
There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.
Also, skyscrapers are hugely energy efficient, you wouldn’t believe how much can be achieved with skyscrapers, in Asia they use the same mega building for residence, offices and Malls, you don’t even need BUSES you just need elevators. Wow, talk about saving on gasoline!!!
But you have these greens that criticize skyscrapers, don’t mention BUSES, but all want to grow their own food in their backyards. It is not going to happen, you wouldn’t believe how much excess manufacturing capacity is available worldwide, there are 100 million farmers in the world, let alone using chemical intensive – high tech farming that needs very few farmers to operate.
JHK is living in his own novel, is confusing his imagination with reality, it is like lets make believe energy is finishing, how are we going to deal ? He doesn’t get it that societies can adapt rapidly, can change how they operate very quickly if they want to, they can build a few thousand high quality – luxury skyscrapers, and you don’t even need transportation anymore.

Another thing I just can’t understand is when all the economists of all colors and nations insist that the “economy has to grow” in order to pay back the debts and create more work, etc. But exactly what has to grow ? Do we need more houses built ? more cars built ? do we need more banks, more people working in banks ? How many more products and houses and cars and furniture can we possibly make and exchange ?
If anything, the west as in USA, EU and JAPAN can’t really grow much anymore, these places are saturated with consumer items. Maybe we can tear down all homes and cars every three years and make – buy everything all over again. Then you can have a “growing” economy.
Of course the only economies that will really grow in this sense will be Latin America, India, China, Indonesia and a few others as they transit from low class to middle class, but once that 20 to 30 year growth window is achieved, they will go in low growth to no growth pattern as in “The Lost Decades of JAPAN”.
But even so, manufacturig as such does not follow a linear law of more items produced, more labor needed: actually most optimized factories can produce even 3 times more of any item with very few new “hires”. So what gives ? Aside from the fact that manufacturing is done by robotys or in China and Indonesia for 200 dollars a month salaries, what gives ? EXACTLY WHAT ON EARTH HAS TO GROW FOR THE ECONOMY TO GROW ?
Hint, Hint …. Maybe health care, as in make everyone sick and needing as many pills as possible to get them even more sick and needing more pills, operations, hospitals etc. Yeah, get everyone all sick and busted, 100 million people working in hospitals to cure and render even more sick 200 million people…

Junk Stop
MSNBC has just introduced us to a new word describing BP’s latest ideas on how to plug the gaping hole in their Deepwater Hoizon:
It seems that Plan B,C and D didn’t work. So perhaps the execs at BP consulted with countryman, resident genius, Stephen Hawking, the erstwhile Lucasian professor at Cambridge University most recently known to be contemplating the nature of extraterristrials. (He suggests that human-kind should stay away at all cost from making contact with these intelligent life forms who traveled many light years to meet us, lest they could have a similar nature to us and mine the earth for themselves.)
The newly hatched plan is to use garbage to plug the hole….Yes you can’t make this stuff up. I’m in awe of the news. No novelist could come up with these ideas. How can you compete with reality?
Now all the garbage trucks are moving in a convoy toward the Louisiana coast …
With bated breath we should all hold hands in the hope that this plan will work. The alternative would be a build-up of pressure and you can only imagine the rest….

Cabbage or any plant in the crucifer family will bolt for 2 reasons: Either in response to stresses or to reproduce if all is well. It is inevitable, however can be delayed of the stresses are removed. Here are a couple suggestions, be sure the soil is warm and well drained, and the water is fresh and plentiful (but not drowning). A good dose of compost will keep the nutrients high which will delay the reproductive stage. If using well or city water the chances are there is sodium in it which is a huge stresser, use rain water. If you must use well or city water then go to the local construction (or demolition) site, and grab some drywall. Strip off the paper and compost it. Grind up the insides (calcium sulfate), and use about couple pounds around and near roots or as you are planting. The sulfates will aid in the prolonging of the vegetative period as well as bind the sodium from the water, and the calcium is beneficial in cell wall formation and disease reduction. Also calcium will aid in long term soil structure.
jd

Mr K says that the world money system is held together by spit and prayer plus, I would add, bullshit and lies.
One inventive bit of bullshit I heard a while back came from some greedhead working, I think, at Scotia Macleod. He said people buy stocks to “participate in earnings”.
I was awestruck at the malignant genius. I savoured the absurdity for a long time. Participate? WTF does that mean? “Participate in earnings” wins a prize, it is more devoid of meaning than the phrases “family values” or “support the troops” which mean whatever it is you want them to mean.

Another Big Lie: shareholder value. This is usually quantified as the price for which a stock is trading on one of the exchanges.
In defining these things there’s always the conflict between “what is” versus “what should be”. “What is” is the price that a stock is actually trading at. This is a toxic brew of some facts, opinions plus greed, stupidity, fraud, fear, lies and delusion.
I’ve seen academic studies that try to reason their way to a formula that determines shareholder value. They try to determine “what should be”. They babble on and on about things like free cash flow, non cash expenses but IMO unless shareholder value is determined by the cash that a company pays its common shareholders it’s all nonsense.
IMO shares have no value unless there is cash coming from the company to the shareholders by way of dividends. The question that a prospective shareholder has to ask is this: what is the flow of dividends I can expect from this business and how risky is that flow. Then, what am I willing to pay for that flow of dividends given the risk. That’s it. That there is some other way to determine shareholder value is the Big Lie.

Very interesting Cash. Yeah no one talks about dividends anymore – just another thing going down the memory hole. And just when defined benefits went away and Americans were all supposed to invest. Evidently we’re supposed to be all little Corporations following the market every hour in order to buy or sell accordingly. Well Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad was right: most people are not capable of this and should never have been asked to do so. And next year the Boomers start to retire. Other tsunamis coming: the unraveling of derrivates and the disaster of way too much vacant office real estate. Doom, Doom, Doom, D….

Hey Asia, goji is definitely on my list of things to grow. Matter of fact I would have ordered one in this last order if my nursery had them available. Instead I got the pineapple guava.
It does seem to be a rising nutraceutical star, doesn’t it? Like Aronia, acai, pomegranate, and the usual blue, cran, black, and raspberries. All of these we will grow, but I hadn’t considered growing goji commercially…we’ll see how the one does first.

Quite so. He Who Cannot Be Named cannot be named. Some just call him the Hero.
Why can he not be named? Because of human conditioning. There is a whole school of Ad Hominem reasoning that states that anything he believed is automatically wrong. So if he believed that 2+2=4, than 2+2 does not equal 4. I’m serious, it’s that crazy. Western Man is unfortunately incredibly vulnerable to media manipulation – slogans, images, guilt tripping, false theology – much of this the work of Edward Bernays and his succesors.

Back in the 1920’s and even before, they promised up paradise via technology. All we have to do is cooperate – leave the family farm and go work in the factories. And look where we are now. But it’s interesting to examine the promise: was it ever even a possibility? Say we could have controlled population and solved peak oil, could it have worked? The question become existential: what would people have done with all the leisure? Could people have handled it? And even more deadly: was it ever a possibility that the rich would allow themselves to become “just folks”? If everyone has leisure and access to energy, resources, and movement, what then does being rich mean? To be rich means other people lack these things. As C.S Lewis says, the deepest desire in the fallen heart is to be above others; to be an insider. He called it “the ring of power” and the great desire is to be inside the ring and thus better than those without. As the Bible says, the heart is corrupt above all things.
You might like the architectural vision of Paolo Soleri. He wants or wanted to put humans into giant boxes a half a miles on a side. He estimated such a thing could house hundreds of thousands at a fraction of the cost in energy to the way we live now. Kind of insectoid for my taste. Like Frank Herbert’s “The Hellstrom Hive”. I think Robert Silverberg also wrote about something like this but I haven’t read it yet. I will go look for it today in my stacks.

Vlad, I love Washington state, no doubt about it. Oregon and California too, and what the hell, throw Idaho and Montana in as well. All wonderful places. But I think if humans are to live successfully in the long term there then they need to get their heads right about water and forest regeneration timeframes. There’s no way that region will support its current population. Especially if Barbara Boxer thinks it’s the “right” of Californians to water their lawn.
It most certainly isn’t.

“The question become existential: what would people have done with all the leisure?”
Only very recently have humans given up leisure in exchange for alarm clocks, commutes, cubicles, shitty food, and long hours on the payroll.
Foraging cultures worked, on average, 16-18 hours a WEEK to secure their needs.
We just have a really fucked up sense of what a “need” is.

You wound me Wage. Ask Vlad, I don’t hold to his views on race. Vlad and I have had long debates on the issue.
But in another way, you’re right. All my working life I was the smarty pants in a sharp suit, the numbers guy who would totter out at night exhausted and mentally drained. But what did I accomplish?
I rejected everything to do with manual labour to spite my parents because I’m an asshole. I’m not as smart as I thought, I didn’t think things through.
I busted my ass on a farm when I was young, applying brute force with bare hands, shovels, pitchforks and crowbars, studiously not learning about growing things. Later I worked in a dairy. Just for money. This was not the life for me I said.
Now I regret it. Like I said in an earlier post I will take one farmer shovelling shit in his fields over a thousand people like me in meeting rooms in glass towers.

“…write the bankers a check for the total sum we owe and let them find someone to cash it.”
Bo Gritz use to say something like, “The Congress has the authority to coin money and establish the value thereof. Just have them issue an order to the Treasury to mint a single Gold Coin” about two feet across and call it a One Quadrillion Dollar Commemorative to the Jubilee.
Then deliver it the the owners of Federal Reserve and pay off the national debt. With the “change” buy all their buildings, real property, mortgages, etc. and tell them to leave by the first available method {walking??}, or spend a couple weeks hanging from the gallows on the Washington Mall.
This should be followed by a Public Proclamation and Day of Thanksgiving and announcement that all debts {monetary obligations} public and private are absolved, paid in full and made null and void. All Federal Reserve Notes {filthy rags} to be burned.
Where ever you live: you own. If you are residing in {or under} public facilities, vacant land in each county, will be divided to you according to your numbers and the productivity of the land {and it’s improvements}.
Each of us has a birthright to a portion of this planet and the means to provide for ourselves. Parasitical behaviour will no longer be tolerated among free people.

This humanure: do you have to do something to sterilize it? The reason I ask is I seem to remember seeing a TV program a long time ago where people in a slum in S. America were using sewage to fertilize tomato plants. Aid workers told them not to do this because the sewage was transmitting polio. But my memory is foggy on it due to time. So is there danger of disease with this or is the danger minimal?

The Palose, central Idaho on the border with Oregon, is one of the greatest Agricultural areas on Earth. In some areas, the topsoil is 18 feet deep. Yet, Eastern Oregon is by and large, a semi-desert. The Climate out there seems to be much more complicated and local than anything in the East.

Oh I know, I know. You wouldn’t believe how down with that I am. I never fully acculturated (domesticated) to this crap. How many times I’ve tried to explain to people that leisure doesn’t just mean watching TV or sleeping. It is the basis of any higher culture or any real culture at all for that matter. How people love their chains! Their work is stressful, if only the stress of boredom. And thus their leisure becomes a desperate attempt to escape from stress via excitement or sloth. It is not productive but degenerative. So when you talk about leisure, this is what people think you are defending. I don’t even try anymore to explain my lifestyle, I just hint that I’m wealthy and stare them down.

If the stock market roller coaster wasn’t enough to make you run for the panic room, along comes a Pakistani-American trained in Pakistan by the Taliban trying to blow up Times Square. Maybe I’m wrong, but after reading Vince Flynn’s latest Mitch Rapp opus I have a nasty feeling that our “friends” in the Middle East have more nasty surprises in store for us in the near future. Am curious what the folks on this blog think about what effect another Times Square attack happening in Chicago or Washington would have on our already fragile economy? And where the hell was our “expert intelligence” when this Pakistani was making plans to blow up innocent people in the heart of America’s largest metropolis? Isn’t it time for heads to roll in Washington?

george, I’m not saying heads shouldn’t roll, but as long as our country remains relatively free, there will be terrorist incidents. It’s impossible to stop. I only hope that every attempt is as poorly carried out as this one.

‘when this Pakistani was making plans to blow up innocent people…
Yet the US govt and liberals want immigration
[letting muslims in as we bomb them in 2 undeclared wars], no racial profiling,liberal outrage over arizona. [that dimwit eberts comments on the 5 students wearing flags was classic!]
70? million visitors to us a year during wartime.
as someone here noted a few days ago…most engineering grad students in US are foriegn.
all i can figure is the powers that be want the US to fall.
look at bloombergs f’in commments for instance.
or obamas after Fort hood [‘lets not rush to judgement’]..
clearly these politicians are transparent.
much as i dislike rush limbos stance on immigration and many other things i agree with his comment:
‘these things dont concern Obamas agenda, while BP disaster does’.

Living in the End Times (Hardcover) by Slavoj Zizekamazon.com/gp/product/184467598X/ref=pe_5050_15282770_snp_dp
Zizek analyzes the end of the world at the hands of the “four riders of the apocalypse.” There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.
After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.

If you can’t leave your money in the market, the best place to invest it is in a geothermal heating or solar domestic hot water system. In “Thriving During Challenging Times” I show how you should be spending your money, while it still has value, that make you more resilient to shocks the system is experiencing… all while reducing your carbon footprint. “Thriving During Challenging Times, The Energy, Food and Financial Independence Handbook.” http://www.cammather.com

I’m seeing more and more commentators identifying the time period of 2012 to 2015 as being the point when we really start sliding down the other end of the peak oil curve. This may be due to chance or the fact that it is the period identified by the U.S. Military’s Joint Operating Environment, but it is an interesting trend.
That said, I have been reading a specialized history entitled “Night Trains,” which chronicles the development of the Pullman sleepers. The author cites records from the timetables prior to 1915, before the establishment of a federal road system. Some of the information is startling. First, the express trains routinely got up to 100 miles an hour when station space and track alignment permitted it. Second, the number of cities that had dedicated Pullman sleepers was breath-taking. Selma, Alabama had a sleeper that ran each night from Selma to Washington, D.C. Birmingham had sleepers going in every direction each night. Nashville had sleepers to New York daily, by more than one route. The amount of transportation service and the flexibility in the pre-auto age was amazing.
We can do that again. Maybe not with Pullman sleepers, but we can run a national transportation system on rail with an electric grid system, extend streetcars in cities, interurbans into the countryside, and provide an electric power grid to smaller cities and towns to propel small electric vehicles in those communities. Much of this infrastructure is already in place. Higher speed rail (by which we really mean 125 mph, not 200 mph) would be good in those specific corridors already identified, but double-tracking mainline railroads, eliminating many grade crossings, and removing bottlenecks would do much if not more for the transportation system while keeping the rails private. And GM can build the coaches we will need with their idle plants.

Planned destruction by comrade Hussein and his fellow looters and thugs is proceeding apace. Your only protection may well be precious metals, both metals and stocks in same. The dollar is toast, just waiting for the fat lady to sing, so any $ investments could well result in your impoverishment. My investments dropped around 70% in the crash, which interestingly allowed me to cash in my 401K and immediately buy the best stocks back. They are now in my complete control, without government oversight and the chance they will nationalize retirement accounts ala Argentina. My investments are now back to pre-crash values, and it will only get better, at least from an investment standpoint, with the planned destruction of our way of life and the dollar guaranteed to drive up gold and silver. Just have to be patient and ignore the inevitable profit taking, and stay with the trend. Guns and ammunition are also getting much more valuable in case you hadn’t noticed.

Well this is a ‘Black Swan’ event in the market mysteriously tanking… The statistical arbitrage and Quants are so narrow focused that they can’t take fundamentals into consideration in their models , so they’ll burn the next time the balloon goes up.
oh well..

The group-think that prevails on this site is scary.
I enjoy Kunstler’s spirited writing, and I basically agree with his general prognosis for our current unsustainable happy-motoring lifestyle. I’m just afraid he’s about 15 years ahead of his time.
Get a grip, folks. The world is not going to collapse into a hunter-gatherer society this year, nor the next. In spite of the long unwinding of the over-inflated real estate and bogus money bubble of the late aughts, which will keep the economy limping along at best for the foreseeable future, I will point out that there is currently a GLUT of petroleum on the global market, and an OVERPRODUCTION of natural gas in the U.S. that has driven prices to a five-year low.
Cheap energy for the next several years = cheap crap that can be produced and delivered to the masses at generally affordable prices. So we’ll see more of the same of what we saw in 2009-2010 for at least a few more years before the shit hits the fan. Kunstler, in short, will be wrong with his Dow 4,000 prediction in 2010. Again.

Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.
Some conservative political movements such as the “Tea Party” have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.
Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.
Obama has LOWERED TAXES. Deal with it, if you are capable of dealing with reality.Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009
If you are one of those who want a 15% flat tax, you are actually calling for a massive TAX INCREASE!usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm

You’ve got to be joking, right?
A non-event dominates the news and spin channels for a week and you fall for it?
So what if in the future no car explodes in Chicago and Washington?
What possible affect could non-explosions have on our economy that, say, being trillions of dollars in debt couldn’t have?
Do you realize that cars already kill over 40,000 Americans a year? With NO Pakistani involvement?
You’re calling for more surveillance? We already live in a police state.
Should every American have a minder?

There is a precise intentionality in the USA and Worldwide not to ever mention BUSES. When you mention BUSES on this blog or other blogs/forums people always say, “oh you mean that crap I rode in Detroit”, or “that horrible experience I had in that monkey of Austin Texas (less mass transit than in Bangladesh)”, etc. They can’t even imagine that BUSES can be made luxury, high quality, silent inside and out, with private compartments, with scheduling through internet, with a Rolls Royce type suspension system, etc. They can’t imagine how much can be achieved by simple BUSES.
There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.

There is a precise intentionality in the USA and Worldwide not to ever mention BUSES. When you mention BUSES on this blog or other blogs/forums people always say, “oh you mean that crap I rode in Detroit”, or “that horrible experience I had in that monkey of Austin Texas (less mass transit than in Bangladesh)”, etc. They can’t even imagine that BUSES can be made luxury, high quality, silent inside and out, with private compartments, with scheduling through internet, with a Rolls Royce type suspension system, etc. They can’t imagine how much can be achieved by simple BUSES.
There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.

There is an intentionality to not mention BUSES but instead talk about subways, high speed rail, railroads, etc. because rail transit is full of conflict and politics, costs alot of money and will never be done. But since BUSES can be deployed tomorrow morning all through the USA suburbs, the solution would be too easy, we couldn’t believe that the peak oil boogeyman can disappear so easily.

Many above have criticized Jim’s
“apocalypticism”. However, is his
assertion that the world economy is
now so confused with “accounts
UNreceivable” that a collapse cannot
be TOO far away??
Jim DOES dramatize but I believe that
even Jim doesn’t expect this drama to
play out EXTREMELY SOON or even over
a short time span. I think people
are reading his words as meaning that
it’ll be over next week or next month
or something. Nah. He’s quite well
aware that they’ll get hyper-inventive
with their chewing gum and bailing wire
“solutions”.
However, it’s basic chaos-theoretic law
that once instabilities are created in a
system where the instabilities reflect
NONE of the original pattern’s attributes
you actually get FASTER collapses than
expected.
So regardless of whether Jim is off by a
year, two, or even three, only people who
believe in the Tooth Fairy can posit that
the various clusterfucks listed ahead can
ALL be dodged: a) Freshwater in the West,
in China, etc., b) Fossil fuel depletion,
c) Financial system seized by lawsuits due
to “unknown counterparties”, d) Various
manmade eco-catastrophes caused by the
arrogance of “techno-triumphalism” (Jim,
I love that term).
This doesn’t even start in on more subtle
stuff like a social order based on really
base pop cultures that emanates from the
prison yard or the heroin den. How can
we look at that and imagine heroes creating
solutions?
Eleuthero

The problems today are excess capacity in all productive endeavors, work not being necessary anymore as in WORK IS OBSOLETE, IS NOT NEEDED, THERE IS NOT ENOUGH POSSIBLE ACTIVITY TO KEEP MILLIONS OF PEOPLE BUSY WORLDWDIE FOR 8 HOURS A DAY.

But everyone wants to beat up the next poorest guy, they all want someone next to them to have less: in greece the whole world goes against them “retiring early”, the fact that unmarried daughters get a free salary, 1,000 euros a month etc. In the USA everyone hates the workers who have “union jobs”, they are the enemy. There is the great desire to make the poor beat up each other, to place poor against poor.
But they don’t understand that if you don’t just give away those free salaries, that money will just end up in the same pockets of those 10 million rich families worldwide. Either you give the free money to the low and middle class, or it will just make the rich richer.
The system today cannot in no way provide jobs to millions people because these jobs are not needed, robots and computers and third world workers working for 200 dollars a month can do all the work that is needed.
The company owners will only hire if they can really make a large profit out of the workers, which means you can’t pay them more than 200 or 300 dollars a month.

You’re onto something EightM about
global overcapacity. However, that’s
because “capacity” has little meaning
in a world where half of sold goods
are unrelated to survival.
In fact, in the USA, we have serious
need for fixed plumbing in most cities
(most is circa 1875), our utility grids
are ancient, our rail system would be
seen as crude in Slovenia, etc etc etc.
The problem is that we’re getting fewer
and fewer graduates in Engineering and
Science at PRECISELY the moment when we
are about to need MASSIVE and basic
engineering know-how because realtors
and MBAs are not going to overhaul a
grid or adapt it to altfuels. Sorry.
Therefore, EightM, I posit that we ought
to be busy as a culture GEARING UP for
the kinds of people we’re going to need.
Instead, because of “idle capacity”, we
will encourage careers where fake economies
exist … like GAME PROGRAMMERS … talk
about a waste of a cerebrum!!!
Eleuthero

Are you kidding me ? There are as of today in the USA and worldwide hundreds of thousands of very good technicians, engineers, etc. of all colors kinds and stripes to “overhaul” the grid and fix plumbing. There is on the other hand a precise intentionality to not let these people do this work: that don’t want to fix the grid or plumbing BECAUSE THERE IS VERY LITTLE YIELD, OR PROFIT FROM THESE SIMPLE, NOT EXCITING, BACK TO EARTH activities. It is capitalism, with its idiotic, stone age, profit motive, that doesn’t want to do anything that doesn’t provide a mega profit and super yield from activity and labor.
The US could solve all of its housing, transportation problems, etc in probably two years if it had a very strong central government that would decide to blast a few trillion dollars on excellent high speed, quiet and advanced BUS service all through the USA – suburbs, well constructed town houses in moderately density suburbs, etc.
Instead what do all the US governments do (left or right) give billions to banks to play rip off the next stooge. And always complain about the need to be “competitive”, more reserch more innovation. A bunch of idiotic fluff to not do that little real work that must be done.

Town houses with cheap rents, costing what they should according to the future going salaries: the future salaries in the USA will be between 500 and 1,000 dollars a month in case you haven’t noticed with whom the USA is “competing” with, therefore rents should be 100 to 200 dollars a month. And no more buying houses, that is retarded, only the rich buy houses, normal workers rent and can always change where they want to work and live according to a healthy , dynamic rent housing market.

The entire idea of research, innovation, high technologies that create new “jobs”, that make “the economy grow” comes from an era between 1975 and 2000 when Microprocessors first, then Personal Computers and then the Internet created thousands of new companies, new kinds of jobs, new jobs and organizations that effectively did make the economy grow. Problem is : THAT ERA IS OVER.
In that era, the US did not have the competition of China, India or South Korea, there was alot that could be invented, there was some relationship between research -> innovation -> new jobs -> economic growth. But that relationship is gone now, will never come back because it was a one time fluke, a one shot quirk of events in a window of time, with a given technology and evolution of, that won’t be repeated again and for sure not in that fashion, and rarely generating new jobs and economic growth. If anything it will probably kill more jobs, concentrate more wealth in the Cpatilist Social Class if it ever even happens again. WE NEED CHEAP RENTS FOR HIGH QUALITY HOUSES, MASS TRANSIT IN LUXURY BUSES, AND FREE SALARIES, 3,000 DOLLARS A MONTH. THE RESOURCES ARE ALL OUT THERE, BUT ONLY A FEW GREEDY PIGS WANT TO HOG THEM ALL UP

This humanure: do you have to do something to sterilize it?
If you compost the humanure with some other organics, the pathogens (and weed seeds if there are any) are killed as long as you have temperatures up to 150-160 degrees (stick your hand inside the pile, if it is too hot to keep it in there, you are golden). Add ground up drywall to reduce the smell and increase nutrients (from ammonia and sulfates).

The only thing you might want to worry about is the pissed-off unemployed. That is a problem that is here already. The other bigger worry is the sudden appearance on this site of the use of humanure. It’s just like dog and cat shit. It has organisms and it just ain’t right. Ok, maybe in North Korea.

Truth–just a matter of opinion
One of my observations on our corporatist version of freedom of speech is that you have a right to your opinion, but not the right to know the truth. (Colbert’s version of truthiness). We are living in a tower of babel with all kinds of crazy ideas going around, but nobody is talking facts. Unfortunately even if you do give them facts they won’t accept them.
I woke up this morning to a breakdown of a poll taken on American attitudes toward off-shore drilling. It broke down to something like this:
55% pro
37% against and
15% not sure (don’t ya just love the not sure)
What I think is behind these numbers is the belief that through drilling offshore, the US will become energy independent from those countries who hate us while making huge profits at our expense. Also that there’s a huge cache of oil to be extracted for many years to come.
That is a separate reality that the Republicans have invented for their acolytes that assumes that the oil extracted offshore by transnationals from abroad (BP) will sell directly to the US market.
The media refuses to set the record straight, as if truth were just a matter of opinion. The only person I’ve heard explain that the oil is pooled internationally is Daryl Ratigan.
If the uninformed are assuming that they will get better oil prices, think again. It is still an international market. Do these people understand that our economy is globalized and the people who instituted free trade are too big to be contained by a market of only 300 million when the world offers billions of consumers?
In response to the need for affordable housing a simple way of looking at our economy run by special interest and other post industrial services is: first world prices for a third world country.
ps– public sector services are on the chopping block in true Milton Friedman fashion. Today I saw that Time Warner my former employer just backed the idea of cutting out Saturday postal service.

Before the advent of indoor plumbing (150 years or so) and petroleum based fertilizers (1940’s), people took their chamber pots and dumped them in the garden, and grew veggies for their own consumption. This is not that many years ago. Peak oil may be coming, but peak Phosphorus is close at hand if not past. Yet we flush our phosphorus into the river system, and pick up our dog shit (one of the most biodegradable substances on the planet) with a plastic bag, put it in another plastic garbage bag and haul it straight to the landfill. Good job.

I say, screw your “rents”. Every person on the planet has a birthright to a certain number of square feet {or square acres} of dirt.
Let them build something to live in with their own hands from materialsd they can find on their own land or trade with a nearby neighbor for something he needs {be it labor, adobe bricks, rocks, or wood}. Everything you need is right there by you.
Knowledge of how to do is increased to the point anybody can make anything the actually need, better – locally with local amterials and a little gumption. It is the gumption that has peaked.
As long as people get free rents and incomes and buses – their gumption will decrease into silly time and resource wasting bullshit endeavors that keep the rich rich and the dependent chained to their diversions.

You might be surprised to hear that some cities in North America compost the bio-solids from sewage treatment plants with other organics diverted from landfill, and after being properly composted, screened and tested, spread the compost on the park where your dog shits.

Where I come from the dogshit goes in a bucket and then gets dumped over the side of our hill. The parasites go with it. If you want to shit in your garden, no problem, but don’t send me any zucchinis. They did a lot of things 150 years ago. Killed criminals, had sex, enjoyed life, smoked cigarettes without feeling like a criminal, ate food with the good stuff not removed, got polio, swam in New Jersey’s surf and didn’t worry about feces, etc. Some good, some bad. I do know my grandparents shit in a shed that had a big hole under it. Where your relatives shit I can’t vouche for.

Outhouses are great places to dig for shit. Best place to find silver & gold coins, right next to the stratified remains of great-grandpa’s chikkin ‘n corn dinner circa 1875.
Shitpits were also a fave repository for criminalia, ofttimes guns used to commit crimes were chucked there.
Archaeologists say the stank still remains, though.

“We are living in a tower of babel with all kinds of crazy ideas going around, but nobody is talking facts.”
Facts are over-rated when people can’t even communicate. The very words we are using mean different things to different people, even when they are the same words.
Simply do, what you know to be right and let your actions communicate. Agreeing before doing is not required to change the future.

For decades investment industry bullshit artists have been selling investors on capital gains.
Amazingingly, the BS artists managed to break the connection in investors’ minds between dividends and the value of a share. Once that was done investors also no longer associated capital gains with the expectation of higher dividends in the future.
They did this by telling investors that share prices rise and fall with “earnings”. And investors fell for it. But I would humbly submit that earnings are useless to me as a shareholder unless I get my cut every quarter by way of a dividend cheque. What good do earnings do me unless they are sitting in my personal bank account?
I would also humbly submit that earnings are an accounting opinion, nothing more. A dividend cheque in your mailbox is a fact.
Ah yes, company management is “reinvesting” your money. Sure. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
They also managed to confuse investors about what a “return” means. It used to mean what it says ie a company returns shareholder money by sending them cheques. But no longer. Nowadays investors confuse money coming from the company with money coming from other investors.
So the effect is that companies pretty much have free or extremely cheap money from shareholders. If shareholders were thinking straight (which they are not) they would demand dividend yields that are much higher than bond yields.
Why so? Shareholders do not have the security of a contract that specifies repayment. When it comes down to it shareholders are last in line. Everyone takes priority over them, bondholders included.
Shareholders take on much more risk than bond holders so they should be demanding much more yield. It should be much more exensive for a company to finance itself with equity than with debt.
Company management, workers, suppliers etc all make a living off the company, all get a cut. But shareholders have been played for suckers. For decades.
Was it Goebbels that said if you tell a big enough lie enough times people will believe it. That’s what we have here. You have to marvel, an astonishingly effective con job. And you have to wonder how people could fall for this.
Sorry for the long post.

I will recover it, as it is not a sheer drop. Until then, our best friends, up there, are farmers, and we have a supply of unlimited cow manure. P.S. My intent is not to get in a pissing contest (pun intended), I simply don’t like the idea of dog, cat or human scat near my garden. Hopefully the tomatoes grow a lot better this year, as we in the Northeast had a lot of rot last year due to the wet weather.

Thank you. Liberty and property and linked. Productive land is the most precious commodity on earth.
On the Humanure issue: It really will be the apocalypse if I have to resort to this to fertilize my garden. As long as I have chickens, leaves and dying vegetation, there’s no way.
JD: thanks for the tip on the cabbage bolt. I think it was because of the weird heat wave two weeks ago when it was almost 90 for 4 days. The red cabbage seems to be fine. Lettuces are nice and healthy (in fact I have more lettuce than I can give away -our farmer’s market is not yet open). Thanks also for the tip on sheet rock…I happen to be sheet rocking a new building right now. I’ll save the scraps.

I can’t agree with you more about the TImes Square FAIL being a non-event. Love the sales job on the terror – now Bloomberg is starry eyed over the possibility of a million cameras in NYC like they have in London. Those cameras arent going to be for flaked out Pakistanis. Terror threats are like worrying about ants on the counter while your house is burning down. In our list of troubles, this would be very low on my priority list.

Hey Cash, the Humanure Handbook is an excellent and comprehensive booklet on the specifics of composting human feces. Done correctly it is as safe as any other compost.
The general gasp in the room when it’s mentioned is a purely cultural construct. (Dovey, I used to feel the same way; ask Vlad.)
Like I’ve said before, part of the industrial agrarian cultural paradigm is breaking virgin ground, accumulating latent nutrients in subsequent crops, running them through your gut, and then flushing them (along with a couple gallons of drinking water) into the nearest river. Repeat cycle until we run out of productive land. (Just a hint: we’re getting close.)
Unsustainable even in its outline. JDFarmer is right: peak phosphorus, under our current agricultural models, is a far bigger threat to our survival than peak oil in the near term. And did you know that we are mining this limited blessing to manufacture…um…herbicides with??
Tragic irony of the highest order.

Oh, almost forgot, water flushing toilets are also incredibly unsanitary compared to composting models. If you use a water flush toilet it would be more sanitary to keep your toothbrush in the kitchen garbage can than in the bathroom medicine cabinet with a cover over the bristles. All those aerosols flying into the room every time you splash the water or flush? Nasty. Try going to the potty without splashing copious quantities of E. coli into the air.
Go ahead, try it.

Cash you are my gyro of the day [shout out to the rioters in Greece].
The financial ‘industry’ is just a fast-talking propaganda apparatus designed that isn’t any better than a monkey at investing your money.
Newsflash: THEY DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT GROWING YOUR MONEY. THEY ONLY WANT THEIR FEES.
I unfortunately have worked in the 401k biz, and 80-90% of mutual fund ‘managers’ CANNOT even match what the market ‘returns’ on it’s own, which means YOU can OUT*INVEST 80-90% of the nitwit mutual fund ‘managers’ who make $500,000 a MONTH.
God you are so right on, Cash.

I can’t agree with you more about the Times Square FAIL being a non-event. Love the sales job on the terror – now Bloomberg is starry eyed over the possibility of a million cameras in NYC like they have in London
Remember the Christmas bomber? The lonely rich kid that hooked up with terrorists and almost blew his —-off?
I couldn’t believe how fast (less than 24 hrs) “Skeletor” Michael Chertoff was on Meet the Press offering his ready to go body scanners to keep us safe at the airports. I wonder how much money he’s making on that business.
Since the Times square “terror” debacle we are now talking about cameras cameras everywhere.
The businesses that are doing great these days are in the technical security industry.—hope they’ve got lots of jobs to offer the unemployed.

“Speaking of oil, the Deepwater Horizon disaster (still ongoing) has gotten so boring to the editors of The New York Times that further news about it has been banished from the front page of the paper.”
Yep. Nothing in the NYT today. And the stinky goo is still gushing out of the well. OMG.

I’m not a bible scholar, or even particularly religious (and apologies to those that are), however one can only wonder what is unravelling…
Rev.18
[1] And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
[2] And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
[3] For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
[4] And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
[5] For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
[6] Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
[7] How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
[8] Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
[9] And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
[10] Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
[11] And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
[12] The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,
[13] And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
[14] And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.
[15] The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,
[16] And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!
[17] For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
[18] And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!
[19] And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
[20] Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.
[21] And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
[22] And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;
[23] And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
[24] And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
But fortunately it packs a jolly cheerful ending…
Rev.21
[1] And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
[2] And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
[3] And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
[4] And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
[5] And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

Talking shit on a blog is not going to get anyone more security. either is cameras on every pole. Although I do think they are concerned about people who grow their own.
I saw two FEMA dudes at a flea market/auction where the Amish and Mennonites sell the excess produce and bakery goods, plants, and {another man’s} junk, then livestock in the afternoon.
They seemed to be taking it all in with a look of “what can we do about this” on their face. I was loath to talk with them as I did not trust my verbal self control among potential vipers.

That worries me. There is a mennonite FM about an hour and 20 from me in Benton TN. Last time I went up there some of the vendors were talking about a bill being proposed to regulate farmers markets in some way..requiring FDA approval. For our safety, of course. I don’t know if the animal ID chip is still on the table but that one is a “fee” for every animal if you are a small non commercial outfit. If you are Tyson however, your fee can cover big groups.

[5] And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold,
… the gigantic stinking dump-out I have made upon the waters in its white ceramic gleaming mouth which will clog all central Jersey sewer systems … Oh my lord!!, behold that monster load.

Have you ever been to Shanghai, Tokyo, New York City, Seoul or Sao Paolo ? Do you have any idea how many people are out there in the world ? Do you have any idea how much land all those people would need if they had to grow their own food and make their own houses ? It is not going to happen, we live in huge aglomerates of cities and people, you can’t go in your own little forest and be your own hero. Some may do it, maybe a few thousand can, but sooner or later the city people will take it all away from you.
Freedom and liberty have always been a farce, a lie: we need cheap rents – 100 to 200 dollars a month for well made town houses about 120 square meters size (1,300 sq feet), free salaries, about 3,000 a month, and a huge silent, advanced simple BUS system, luxury BUSES electric diesel.
This is what is needed, all the other talk is a huge waste of time.

Rotten tomatoes are generally a sign of calcium shortage, especially if they rot from the stem end. Try the drywall I mentioned earlier, the calcium sulfate (gypsum) does wonders for the soil and the plant from a disease standpoint. Keeps it out of the landfill also. If you are using cow manure or compost you are also short of sulfur which will be released from the gypsum.
No pissing match here either, just information,
jd

…”you can’t go in your own little forest and be your own hero. Some may do it, maybe a few thousand can, but sooner or later the city people will take it all away from you.”….
Okay. Until then? I plan on doing what I do. Its not heroic, it’s just life.

Apparently there is no amount of derision or disdain that I can heap onto 8M that will sway him from his endless repetitive nonsense: Buses, skyscrapers, free salaries, low rents etc etc.
I envision 8M pounding out his message on an old PC in the dayroom confines of some gloomy institution like “The Greystone Asylum for the Non-Criminally Insane.”
I find myself wildly curious as to what a person such as 8M looks like … as when one is driving along the highway and another driver does something so incredibly stupid that you must rush up beside them and look quickly to the right to see what this asshole looks like.

Yes Jim, the stock market has become an expensive joke, destroying where it doesn’t need to.
Maybe it is the only game in town, for the players in that theatre.
Its time to turf out the unproductive elements of the stock market, and force them to shovel shit where their actions mainly affect themselves; in ways that they might understand.
Grasping onto the American dream is one matter, but scuppering everything else across the globe, shouldn’t be tolerated.
Regulation? Yes, for once, yes.
Regulate America, Banks, Europe with its Greece and bedfellows, and everything that cannot operate with self control.

yeah 8m please shut the fuck up, NO ONE wants your ones-size fits all idiocy. btw you forgot to tell us what to eat.
you need to go to romania where they already have the BUS paradise & square-box cement slum housing you so adore.
plus who’s gonna manufacture your luxury buses? the guys who get 3,000 a month for doing nothing? yep i’ll bet that’ll do wonders for quality brakes and steering.
dude you seriously need to get yourself a cow, at least that way you’ll get your hands on something soft & milk-filled besides your head.
other than that i loves ya bro’. peace to you

this is from fireandreamitchell.com:
Elena Kagan’s undergraduate thesis at Princeton lamented decline of socialism
Cozy with Goldman Sachs, anti-military AND a lover of socialism?
Could Obama have picked a better nominee for SCOTUS to support his ideology? It’s sure doesn’t seem that way. According to WND, Kagan’s undergraduate thesis at Princeton, lamented the decline of socialism in the country as “sad” for those who still hope to “change America.” Titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” Kagan opined that infighting caused the decline of the early socialist movement. She asked why the “greatness” of socialism was not reemerging as a major political force.

Tripp said: “Oh, almost forgot, water flushing toilets are also incredibly unsanitary compared to composting models.”
Do you have a source to any published research on this, Tripp? I am all for composting toilets and humanure, but the bathroom is not that dangerous.

As Professor Gerba’s research would later determine, however, the bathroom was hardly the most dangerous part of the house, microbe-wise. The real pesthole: the kitchen sponge or dishcloth, where fecal coliform bacteria from raw meat and such could fester in a damp, nurturing (for a germ) environment. Next came the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, and the kitchen faucet handle. The toilet seat was the least contaminated of 15 household locales studied. “If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts,” the professor says, “he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and crap in your sink.”
Talk with this guy for a few minutes and you realize that everything people think they know about household cleanliness is wrong. You think a guy’s apartment is bound to be germier than a woman’s? Uh-uh. Single men tended to have lower bacteria counts, since they never cleaned and thus didn’t spread the crud around. (Remember this, lads, it may be useful ammunition someday.) Women’s public restrooms contained twice as much fecal bacteria as men’s, probably because the women were accompanied by sanitary napkins, grimy small children, and babies in need of a change.

Both the Left and the Right are criticizing Kagan.
That tells me she will be confirmed with no problem. I think she is cute and smart and liberal and it makes perfect sense Obama chose her.
She isn’t anti-military. She did not want any organization that discriminates against certain students to be recruiting on campus. The military discriminates against gays. She lost the case, and then she allowed the military to recruit. She was against discrimination BY ANY GROUP ON CAMPUS, not against the military.

“Do you have any idea how much land all those people would need if they had to grow their own food and make their own houses?”
I didn’t say they all had to grow their own food. I say they must all have their own piece of land. They can lease to someone with skill and acumen, to grow, harvest, mine, or simply live on it, and rent a cottage to some one who wants to live some where other than his own piece of land {perhaps he has it leased!}
You don’t need dollars when you have wealth. It is the straitjacket of faux-money that we trade our lives {souls} for {one stinking hour at a time} that keeps us jumping through hoops, when every blessed one of us hates jumping through hoops.
I understand you want to bypass this and just pass out the money for free… but what happens when no one is making or growing stuff? Why would those guys with 8 wheel tractors {they don’t own them} keep working? To recycle your humanure {one of a few things we all produce}?

Great essay Jim, although one question comes to mind concerning the local bank notes backed by gold: Who owns the majority of the physical gold?
If the answer is the same bankster rats that sold us down the river in the first place, then a gold backed currency won’t change things very much.

“a gold backed currency won’t change things very much”
Nope. For the life of me I cannot understand how so many people believe gold has value. It is just one of thousands of minerals on the planet and you can’t eat any of them.
The only reason you can even exchange gold for food is because of the hallucinatory psychological brainwashing that gold has value. People who value gold are brainwashed.
Give me fiat money. I am brainwashed into to believing those pieces of paper money have value… and, apparently, so is my grocer.

“Give me fiat money. I am brainwashed into to believing those pieces of paper money have value… and, apparently, so is my grocer.”
Assuming that your grocer will remain as brainwashed as yourself in the days ahead may cost you your life.
The people’s production, be it barley, wheat, tomatoes, gold, do-dadds, thingajigs, golly whompers, or warm fuzzies, etc. and their perceived value to their neighbors, which of course can change at a whim {perhaps in association with hunger pains} is the true measure of value.

MD said: “Assuming that your grocer will remain as brainwashed as yourself in the days ahead may cost you your life.”
Nope. My grocer and I are friends. The organic farmer (who supplies the farmers’ market) and I are friends. We all recognize what fiat money is and we are playing a game with it.
If gold and fiat money both disappeared tomorrow, my grocer, my friend the organic farmer, and I could all switch to a barter system. Money is not necessary when friendship is present.
Stop obsessing about money, messianicdruid. You of all people should know not to lay up treasures on earth. You of all people should know what will truly cost you your life… and playing the fiat money game will not cost you your life. Money is convenient. It is currency (like a current it must keep moving). It is ultimately valueless.

Q, just transcend your cynicism and accept the truth: the solution to all of our problems are free salaries about $3k per month, luxury simple busses, townhouses, cheap rents about $200 per month. Resistance is futile. All u have to do is see the light.

>my grocer, my friend the organic farmer, and I >could all switch to a barter system.
Asoka, what will you be offering them in return for the products of their labor? Just curious 🙂
Afghan war is 9 years old, Asoka. How do you reconcile your unwavering admiration for Obama with his inexplicable enthusiasm for this endless war?

My friends the organic farmers have a large number of employees who are hispanic and my friends the organic farmers have children who do not speak Spanish. They want their children to learn Spanish. I have taught Spanish and would be happy to work out an exchange so that I get organic food for teaching their children three hours a week.
It’s just an example. I have many such skills (both manual and intellectual) to barter and I’m not afraid of work.

150 years ago?
Every year, most of the time twice a year, they spread sewage sludge on the field near my house.
Personally, I have nothing against composted human manure.
BUT
The sludge also has all the chemicals and medicines that people dump into their toilets, as well as the chemicals to make their toilet water blue and to make it smell good (!), the nuclear waste that my hospital is allowed to dump into the system, as well as so many non-biodegradable tampon applicators that if you walk on the field, it looks like they planted tampons!
Plus, it stinks for a week. I don’t think it’s properly composted.

On my radio show today, I was talking about the giant construction project going on at the airport down the street from me.
Cement trucks go down my street constantly, and jets are starting to fly over my house.
I said that in November I saw a sign that said that the national guard air force was building a base there, and I was outraged that they could do such a thing without consulting the people of this town.
My co-worker told me yesterday that she goes by there everyday and she has never seen such a big building and there is no sign saying what it is now.
After my show my daughter called to tell me that a co-worker who is in the aviation program and is a right winger, but listens to my show every week (just to get mad, I guess), told her that I was full of shit.
It isn’t a base, he said. It’s a FEMA building for “disasters”.
Oh, that’s all right, then. It isn’t the military, it’s Homeland Security.
We are VERY sparsely populated around here.
Why build a gigantic building for “disasters”?
What kind of “disaster” involves hauling people to the airport? There are already 2 hangars there.

“plus who’s gonna manufacture your luxury buses? the guys who get 3,000 a month for doing nothing? yep i’ll bet that’ll do wonders for quality brakes and steering.” ROBOTS
And Computers will do all out thinking

Obvioulsy you didn’t read my analysis carefully enough, go back and do your homework, read it all very carefully, technology has created automatic economies, has created free wealth. Nothing can stop the march on of the ending of work by computers and robots.
Unless you are a Marxist and think that all of reality is just based on human relationships, on power struggles between individuals, on arbitrary social rules and social structures that define how individuals interact, and conflict and behave. Then anything goes, even slave factories…

“I understand you want to bypass this and just pass out the money for free… but what happens when no one is making or growing stuff? Why would those guys with 8 wheel tractors {they don’t own them} keep working? To recycle your humanure {one of a few things we all produce}?”ROBOTS will do all our work and COMPUTERS will do all our thinking
Obviously you didn’t read my analysis carefully enough, go back and do your homework, read it all very carefully, technology has created automatic economies, has created free wealth. Nothing can stop the march on of the ending of work by computers and robots.
Unless you are a Marxist and think that all of reality is just based on human relationships, on power struggles between individuals, on arbitrary social rules and social structures that define how individuals interact, and conflict and behave. Then anything goes, even slave factories…

Check out:alfin2100.blogspot.com/2010/04/peak-oil-peak-water-peak-lithium-peak.html
We just can’t accept that there are no problems, that we can invent and manipulate reality to any degree and extent, and that we live now, thanks to technology and science in an infinite resource society with everyone “doomed” to be free from work and thought.
Then the plans of space exploration, and the Technological Singularity can be executed in all of its splendor…

Check out:alfin2100.blogspot.com/search?q=kunstler
“The asteroid belt contains an estimated 825 quintillion (a billion times a billion) tons of iron — enough to build shells around planets, gigantic cities in space, and starships carrying entire civilizations. How much is this iron worth? Lewis performs a fanciful calculation: At present prices of around $50 a ton, the asteroids yield $7 billion of the metal per person for everyone alive today, or an affluent standard of living for a population far larger. Moreover, iron is merely one element found in the Main Belt, which also contains gold, silver, copper, manganese, titanium, uranium, and much else.”
andalfin2100.blogspot.com/2008_03_30_archive.html
“In fact, there is enough value in the solar systems asteroid belt to provide each citizen of Earth with approximately $100 Billion–more wealth than any single super-rich billionaire currently possesses. Not that the wealth of the asteroids will ever be distributed equally to everyone, no. No more than was the wealth from any of a large number of gold-rushes, silver-rushes, diamond-rushes, or large scale rushes to other mineral resources including oil and gas equally distributed. The wealth of the asteroids will go to those who can get there, establish a claim (for now just being there will do that), mine the valuables, get the goods to market, and sell to the highest bidder.”But the wealth will be given to trillions of people populating the solar system in huge megacities in space and on moons and planets because large scale centralized communistic systems are the scientific future of mankind.
The March Forward with Science and Technology continues forever..

Any farmer knows you have to plant extra with crop damage from animals in mind. If you live in an area with an anti-hunting attitude you must fence it in. When the depression gets going full-bore the critters will be “disappearing” anyway. Get a duck for the slugs.

Out here in suburban Philly we have the pig’s blood from all the proccessors, particularly, Hatfield Quality Meats. They dump that stuff all over the fields and it smells bad but not like someone crapped their pants. However, it doesn’t last long and it makes the corn grow like crazy.

As long as you have people ignoring the rules, manipulating the rules or instituting new rules you will have oppression.
Trading liberty for security isn’t recognized as a problem by people who fantasize about reality, taking {and propigating} promises of tyrants, mattoids and dreamers as currency.

Yeah, Mook I have a fence, plant extra plants, and use some other techniques that work pretty well. I live and let live whenever I can. Having critter problems actually means you have something growing worth eating, so that’s a good thing. Thanks for the duck tip.

The link to a Times piece about some big time police work. I wonder why – they let these criminals pass for so long that they could arrest “dozens and dozens.”
The whole things seems a bit Orwellian – like “we got all these toys” – “we gotta use ’em sometime.”nytimes.com/2010/05/14/nyregion/14newburgh.html?hp

“In fact, there is enough value in the solar systems asteroid belt to provide each citizen of Earth with approximately $100 Billion–more wealth than any single super-rich billionaire currently possesses. ”THAT IS ENOUGH FOR EACH PERSON TO HAVE 50 SKYSCRAPERS AND 100,000 MCMANSIONS!
And you guys are taking about dogshit. You guys are completely outside of reality, we have infinite resource societies today. You all want to go back to the dark ages and hate progress and the advancement of Science and Technology. But you all are out luck because this is an automatic process, nothing can stop it.

How about that little flash crash last week when stock prices jumped off a cliff for no apparent reason.
What I’ve been hearing is that they can’t seem to understand what happened that day. Maybe it was program trading? Maybe it was multiple factors?
A real head scratcher.
Maybe it’s just me but (let me just whisper it) does anyone else smell conspiracy here, market manipulation? How about coverup? Yes? No?
No, no, no, this is all highly improper, what am I saying, it was computer driven, it was program trading, a glitchy fragmented system, that’s all.
Whew, for a while I was worried, you know, that the fix is in.

Yes, a college professor friend of mine sent me a link last week for that article. Orwellian eh?
About the crash last week, I heard a hedge fund called Universa placed a bet against the stock market and Barclay’s Capital doubled the ante. I don’t know how many people might have made a killing, but one can only imagine that there was someone buying low and selling high in a matter of minutes. Who knows for sure, but it’s an interesting theory.

Thanks
this is a ‘must check’ for CFN readers.
maybe substitute ‘slavery’ for communism and ‘the rich’ for business?
not that surprising, all that $ has to go somewhere.
all of it cant go to commodities in middle east and africa.
A NEW TRICKLE DOWN THEORY, OUR $ HAS RETURNED!

But I thought the whole idea of the European Union was to lift up poorer members like Portugal and Greece, not drag down wealthier members like Germany and the United Kingdom. What happened to the happy family called Europe, where one day even economic backwaters would enjoy the same standard of living and productivity as their wealthier neighbors? The fact that Germany was forced into bailing out Greece only at the last minute and only after realizing that the Greek crisis could tank its’ own economy, makes me wonder if the Continent will be returning to the bad old days of the first half of the 20th century when old grievances and economic hardship culminated in two world wars, “ethnic cleansing” and plain old murder on a gargantuan scale.

asia, are you one of those people, like qshtik, who believe China is a capitalist country? Are you happy about “our money coming back” in the form of China buying up the United States?
Do you also deny the reality that China is a communist country run by the Chinese communist party? cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
Do you support a communist country buying up land and factories in the USA?
DO YOU KNOW THAT COMMUNIST PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA’S GOVERNMENT IS COMMUNIST?
Communist – a system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single – often authoritarian – party holds power.

“Communist – a system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single – often authoritarian – party holds power.”
Capitalism – a system of government in which the capitalists plan and control the economy and a single group of very powerful capitalists – often authoritarian – holds power.
What’s the difference ? Oh, I see in the capitalist countries everyone has a chance at becoming a super rich capitalist too, you just have to try hard enough. Wow, we will all become steve jobs and bill gates, oh I see…

It is GOLD. Gold is the most royal metal. It is no different than buying silver buttons instead of nickel. This is why you put zincs on a saltwater boat. The electrolysis in the water will attack the least royal metal. Otherwise anything on the boat made of current conducting metal would be eaten away, less precious first. Madoff’s gold propeller would be the last to get it.

Did anyone else find the comments by the so called “Letter to JHK from William Shortino serving with the US Military in Afghanistan” spurious? For instance:
1. He claims he saw a 107mm rocket fly about 10 feet over his head and impact a concrete bunker about 70 paces (roughly 200 feet) in font of him. He then states that the rockets travel at Mach 7 and cannot be out run. A Google search easily identifies the 107mm rocket as an old Soviet weapon variously ascribed to have a blast kill radius of about 150 to 200 feet and a severe injury radius up to 350 feet. It’s motor burn out velocity is about 375 to 400 meters per second. If we take the 400 meter/sec velocity we find that is traveling at roughly 1.2 Mach at motor burn out and will quickly slow from that velocity once it becomes ballistic. As the 107mm rocket weighs about 41 pounds and if we assume half of the weight is propellant and that it really was traveling at 7 Mach when it impacted in front of Shortino the K.E. at impact would have been about 18,400,000 ft lbs. This exceeds the muzzle energy of the 58lb armor piercing D.U. sabot launched projectile from the M1A1 155mm canon (about 14,410,000 ft lbs).
2. He also claims that Arabs/Muslims/Afghnis (take your pick) “have figured out every system we have to defeat their IED’s. Last year they hacked into our pilotless UAV drones with a $29.00 Russian computer program. Command says there is no fix for that” Partially true, in that IEDs are do not lend themselves to 100% detection and destruction and the Iranians likely determined the methodology to hack into the unencrypted video from the drones using the Russian software. Most of the video is now encrypted or in the process of. A perusal of on line videos will provide evidence that many IEDs are destroyed by EOD personnel sans loss of life.
3. A Google search on the name: Sergeant First Class Bill Shortino 831st DDST / US Army
Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan led to the letter to JHK. Google suggested there was a link to a Bill Sciortino obituary in Orleans Parish. LA; however I was unable to locate such in the listing provided.
I think JHK has been duped.
SNAFU

I observe that a number of scientists and engineers, who were afforded access to a limited video of the oil emanating from the broken pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, have estimated the true quantity of oil gushing is likely 10 times the avowed 5000 barrels/day which would mean as much as 50 million gallons of oil has been poured into the Gulf in the past 23 days.
You remember who scientists and engineers are don’t you; we are those stupid bastards who design and build cars, planes, trains, rockets, satellites, radios, TVs, bridges, …… that all you smart bastards cannot live without yet are convinced we are not smart enough to estimate peak oil, human caused global warming, or how much oil is being dumped from the BP mess.
SNAFU

Sir, I do respect those of you who are intelligent and have common sense. However, you same guys have been “expert witnesses” in court and let guys like O.J. Simpson walk. Also, who designed the fail-safe on this well? I also don’t need scientific studies that say: fat people eat too much, ugly people get less dates, shit flows downhill, etc.

For the last three thousand years it’s been the same old shit in Europe. Teuton vs Celt vs Slav vs Latin vs Greek. The 20th Century was just the same old stuff repackaged as nation states instead of tribes.
To me, forming the EU was an attempt to break this suicidal cycle. But IMO blood and soil tribalism is an extremely stubborn thing. Look at the Balkans in the 1990s. How much do Serbs differ from Croats anyway or from Bosnians for that matter. Yet they went at it tooth and nail. Over what?
I don’t think a common currency will work in Europe. In practical terms a common currency works in a continent sized country like the US because people and money can move easily from state to state. A latte addict from New York city can relocate to deepest darkest Texas without having to learn a new language. OK he’ll have to relearn how to walk maybe. Same thing in the other direction, a shitkicker from Texas can move to New York though he may moan about elbow room.
Movement like this in Europe is much more difficult. Greeks and Germans and Italians and French speak mutually unintelligible languages which act as a barrier to migration. Moving from a relatively poor country in Europe to a relatively wealthy country to take advantage of economic opportunities is not like moving from a poor state like Louisiana or Mississippi to a relatively wealthy state like Massachusetts.
An anecdote: I know of an Italian that moved in the 1950s to Germany and worked there as a labourer for a few years. He hated it. He pined for “mia patria”. He liked the money but he didn’t like the food, the weather, the work habits (no 4 hour lunch and afternoon nap), the difficulty of the language and so he went back to Italy which was a relatively quick train ride away and where he opted to live in poverty. Germany in the 1950s was no bed of roses but it was leagues better than Italy.

That reminds of of a holiday weekend about 10 years ago, when I decided that the wood covering in my front yard was an old outhouse, and would be a perfect place to plant a tree, so I set my husband to work digging.
He hit an obstruction, so took a pickax to it.
Turns out that the wood was covering our water pipes, not an old outhouse.
And plumbers charge overtime when they come out on a holiday weekend.

Meanwhile,I keep wondering if there is such service to the people of America that shows the minute by minute location of that moving and spreading oil slick in the gulf,similar to the weather service AND if there is one,where the hell is it hiding???

‘He hated it. He pined for “mia patria”. He liked the money but he didn’t like the food, the weather, the work habits’
He didnt like the food! Assuming he could buy pasta and had a kitchen its his own fault.
my understanding of italy in the 1950s..there wasnt that much food, so he coulda stopped whining.
as grandpa said ‘ its tougher where there aint none’ [ in response to ‘the meats tough’].

To elaborate:
“There are other factors that keep this depression suppressed in the minds of the American public. The most significant of these is unemployment benefits. This did not exist during the Great Depression. When you were out of work, you were out of money. This hit people immediately and many had no way to obtain even the most basic subsistence to feed their families. The welfare system is another contemporary mechanism that was not in place during that time. Right now, these are perhaps the only two things that distance the human suffering from our true economic reality. But they weren’t built to last, and the only reason they have lasted this long is because the government has a vested interest in keeping these entitlement programs going. Providing basic subsistence keeps the people dependent and apathetic to their plight. As long as people have a roof over their head and enough to eat they will allow those who provide those things to take everything else they have.”revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/the-panic-is-on/

I see the range of gold went from 1217 to 1250 today.
So it goes on a daily basis a few more million disappeared out of your pockets due to the manipulator’s con game,all this right under the long noses of congress sitting on their ass,while their corporate criminal “friends” are systematically destroying America with “drill baby drill”and rusting barrels of nuclear waste for your doomed grandchildren to play with.

Funzel, I am enjoying your posts.
You ask where the hell the link to the growing oil “spill” (an explosion which killed eleven people) is hiding.
You might try this link which will take you to a Google Earth site that allows you to type the name of a city and compare the size of the Gulf oil spill to that particular city.
It truly puts the size of the “spill” in perspective.paulrademacher.com/oilspill/

Every time I look at the news I’m more convinced that we are entering into horror film territory.
With the too big to fails, staying TBTF, thanks to congress, the possibility of a collapsing EURO and the continued plundering of the middle class, things go from bad to worse.
Like a wound on the earth’s underwater surface the oil gushes out of control. In the usual fashion BP ties to minimize the damage when confronted by those who have determined that we might by losing 12x more than BP is claiming. All we can do is watch in horror at the devastation and waste.
In the meantime brave people are trying to protect the fragile coastline with low-tech barriers against the inevitable, all the while knowing the hurricane season is just around the corner….
I can’t help thinking of the greedy id of our Transnationals’ creating a “Forbidden Planet” where safety measures of any kind get in the way of profits.
I’ve seen the blob and the blob is us…….

“It is no longer the end of time and of the world which will show retrospectively that men were mad not to have prepared for them; it is the tide of madness, its secret invasion, that shows that the world is near its final catastrophe; it is man’s insanity that invokes and makes necessary the world’s end.” (Foucault, “Madness and Civilization”, p. 14)
“Every year, most of the time twice a year, they spread sewage sludge on the field near my house.
Personally, I have nothing against composted human manure.”
BUT
The sludge also has all the chemicals and medicines that people dump into their toilets, as well as the chemicals to make their toilet water blue and to make it smell good (!), the nuclear waste that my hospital is allowed to dump into the system, as well as so many non-biodegradable tampon applicators that if you walk on the field, it looks like they planted tampons!
Plus, it stinks for a week. I don’t think it’s properly composted.”

A Man said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father.” Economics cannot create or maintain nations what to speak of unions of nations. Such a thing is nothing but a thing of quantity, all quality is in abeyance. There are worse things than war – living death for one thing or racial replacement for another. Whites have inhabited Europe for tens of thousands of years, ever since the ice receeded. But this system which you support will, if not stopped, make Whites a minority in another generation. Face it Cash, it is a complete and monstrous failure, a fake, an imitation of the life of real cultures and nations.
To be charitable: perhaps you are a Roman at heart like Machiavelli was. Even while writing his how-to book on tyranny, he dreamed of the Republic and the Empire. Well then, capitalist democracy can’t get us back there because it doesn’t care about the people or nations it takes over. Only Fascism, the third way between Socialism and Capitalism, can carry us through the present crisis of technological society – and still maintain that society and technology. The only other option is a return to the primitive a la Trip.
Europe would best be served by three Fascisms: Nordic, Latin, and Slavic. Within them, individual Nations and Cultures could continue in some form but now bulwarked by greater alliances. Nothing less will stave off Islam, the Communists, and the Chinese.

There are an extimated 180,000 illegal immigrants in Massachusetts. The “Top Cop”, Attorney General Martha Coakly doesn’t know exactly since as she put it, “Being illegal isn’t illegal in Massachusetts.” So what exactly are we paying these people for – to NOT enforce the laws? To selectively enforce the onces they agree with? What a masterpiece of Byzantine corruption this wretched Liberal Wench is. No wonder she was voted down in favor of Scott Brown, who seems normal superficially at least. Of course he is a protege of McAmnesty himself, John McCain, so who knows where he actually stands on this all important issue.
Arizona: for the first time in over fifty years a state goverment has actually listened to the will of the White Majority and done something to help them. California tried but the proposition was declared unconstitutional by the Court – which will probably be the fate of the Arizona initiative as well. Before that, there was nothing since the Governor of Arkansas tried to block integration using State Troopers and his National Guard. It didn’t come to blood, but that probably would have been the best thing for the Nation. The Gods require such sacrafices now and then – as does the Tree of Liberty.

>Europe would best be served by three Fascisms: >Nordic, Latin, and Slavic.
Vlad, the first thing they will do is wage ruinous wars on each other and on its own citizens, weaken each other and make it easier for Islam and Chinese to conquer them (I think Communists have lost their place under the sun for good, a miserably failed experiment). I’m afraid democratic nation states, as imperfect as they are, is the best we flawed humans are capable of doing. You won’t fare well under Fascism, you’re too free thinking, they’ll quickly do away with you.

Yeah, he didn’t like the food. Your grandpa was right. I met the guy a few times, a good happy fellow, a good family man, he took care of his wife for many years while she was suffering from Parkinsons and Alzheimers and he worked like a slave to put his son through university.
He could have come to Canada or the US where he would not have been alone, he would have had a support network of relatives and friends. Or he could have re-settled in Germany. He had options but he chose what he thought was safe, staying in Italy and subjecting himself and his family to hardship which in my opinion was really dumb.

Vlad, I agree with some of what you say. I agree that economics is not the be all and end all, it can’t create a nation or state by itself. More than anything such a thing exists in the hearts and minds of the people.
I agree that the present system in Europe is a failure. IMO if we continue on our present path our system is also destined to fail (for a myriad of reasons). I support the aspects of our system that work but I do not support the aspects that do not work. Where we differ, as you know, is on the issue of race.
I don’t think fascism is the answer. I agree with Dio. To me fascism, at least as practised in Europe, was a system of extremes. Extreme nationalism, extreme militarism, extreme aggression, extreme authoritarianism, extreme racism. It was a bloodbath that cost European civilization two generations of the best and brightest of its young men but also uncounted civilians. IMO it was an extreme failure.
I think it was because of those two wars plus the Cold War that European or Western civilization lost its will to live. Not only did it lose the vim and vigour of its manhood but I think that consciously or unconsciously people came to the collective conclusion that if this is what our civilization is about then it’s not worth it. Look at the ism’s: marxism, communism, fascism, capitalism, colonialism and on top of that two horrific wars (three if you count Napoleon).
I think the conclusion is wrong for many reasons. If I had a choice of any place and time in history to live my life I would pick this place and this time.
I think Dio is right about one other thing, I don’t think you’ll do well under the thumb of a fascist bossman and his bullyboys.

“The only other option is a return to the primitive…”
No disparagment to any poster, but, there is another way. All these -isms taught from the pulpits and soap boxes steeped in happy-talk {because it is beguiling to the poor} keep us in thrall to the doctrines of men which are the causes of our oppression. The loaf must be baked to remove the leaven {of Herod}, ie. our penchant for political movements designed to take from or add to the Maker’s recipe.

I’ve always found it interesting that people get so flipped out over illegal immigration from some countries, but not from others. Of course, estimates are all over the place but how about those undocumented Canadians? 65,000 (or 75,000 or 120,000 depending on whose figures you use.) Or, the 30,000 from Ireland. Or the 123,246 from England. Not much raving going on over all those folks.

Cash, your Canadian sense of humor is showing! And for some reason I’m digging it!
Back to the humanure thing, a shit and discarded contriband sandwich sequestered from the elements is never going to make good fertilizer. It’s way too hot, anaerobic, and out of context. Human feces composted properly with plenty of high-carbon biomass (sawdust, newspaper, leaves, etc.) will turn into pathogen-free black gold that, even in this culture, could probably be utilized on tree crops without your guests’ lunch coming back.
I compost mine separately and use it only on my fruit and nut trees. At least until cultural attitudes change about it. And if they don’t no one will be around to care.

No disparagement to any poster but we have no fucking Maker! We have no book that is the word of Maker, no son of Maker who died for our sins. We are homo sapiens evolved to this point of precious life we have.
The sooner people stop believing in invisible imaginary Makers, {I refer to all invisible and imaginary rule Makers and all their rules} the better, IMHO.

8M is apparently cursed with the same affliction that the Zeitgeisters and banksters suffer from: this idea that we are somehow outside of Nature, and can ignore the laws of physics if only there is enough money around to create new systems.
This idea is horseshit. Take your eastern bloc rent control and factory farm veggies with you on your way out, brother.

We got our first animal on our new little city farm today! A 4-month-old Kiko nanny goat (New Zealand meat breed). She’s already working on our Vinca infestation in the orchard, preparing the way for the chicken tractor that will follow…

Martha Coakly said: “Being illegal isn’t illegal in Massachusetts.”
Vlad said: “So what exactly are we paying these people for – to NOT enforce the laws?”
We are paying them to apprehend those who commit crimes against property and crimes against persons.
“Being” is not a crime… as much as you wish it so.
Breathing on this side of the border without papers is not a crime. Working and receiving pay on this side of the border without papers is not a crime against anyone.
There are laws on the books for persons, legal or “illegal,” who actually commit crimes against persons or property.
Having law enforcement go after people who are simply breathing nonviolently without papers, or who want to support their families nonviolently without papers, is a gross waste of law enforcement resources, and actually endangers the rest of us, as it makes apprehension of violent criminals that much less likely.
I am glad the person who has some responsibility for law enforcement understands this simple concept.

I hate to rain on the modern agribusiness party above, but our large-scale systems are designed for singular efficiences, not high-quality, nutrient-dense food diversity. When fertility and pesticide inputs can no longer be trucked in and coupled with massive amounts of fossil fuels, this way of producing food will fall VERY hard.
This isn’t speculation either. Look at Havana, Cuba, and their “special period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union when they discovered the merit of this very hypothesis. Now Havana is bursting at the seams with unbelievable produce just outside people’s doors.
And they are much, much healthier for it.

“Hint, Hint …. Maybe health care, as in make everyone sick and needing as many pills as possible to get them even more sick and needing more pills, operations, hospitals etc. Yeah, get everyone all sick and busted, 100 million people working in hospitals to cure and render even more sick 200 million people…”
You at least finally get it, maybe you got it a long time ago, but most of these posters here don’t get, even still. Another fake reason to keep humans away from their humanity, to keep them counting their pennies as if that’s what we are here to do. Vlad gets it as well. We’ve got an evil amongst us, destroying our human-ness, keeping us all separate from the Earth, Nature — all that we are a part of. And you — most of you — argue about oil, profits, pretending to create human community out of what were people who didn’t even know their neighbors, pretending above god awful all that these parasites working out of banks “didn’t know it was coming” when these parasites created the entire build-up and break-down, over and over again. This is not society. This is not a country. This is not humanity. We’re living inside a big ugly joke with the dollars of slavery wrapped and strapped around our bodies, our minds, and our lack of spirituality. Spirituality is not a dirty word. Check out the 90% of your brain you don’t even access or use. Like we’ve all got a great big appendix attached to the little wee bit of brain we do use.

asoka – you personally will beg for world government. And you will not be alone. The chaos is being imposed {trumped up?} so we will appear to have no other solution to what is happening. Someone {anyone!} to impose order on all the short-sighted, ineffectual, counter-productive attempts to solve our problems.
“The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

Tripp sez:
“…When fertility and pesticide inputs can no longer be trucked in and coupled with massive amounts of fossil fuels, this way of producing food will fall VERY hard.”
This, and access to CLEAN water are the easily identifiable dark clouds racing over the horizon. Why people are in such denial about this is truly gob-smacking.
Sorry, but “fall[ing] very hard” will be the only way to wake the dreamer (and even then, I ain’t too hopeful). I suppose those “in thrall” are in some weird way “secure” in their constrained mind-set, perhaps?

“The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” -MD
Ouch! All too true. The latest theory I’ve come across posits that the “carbon credit” sham and swindle is a way for TPTB to manage the contraction and still stay in charge. By strictly doling out energy usage, they’ll [supposedly] be able to track everyone and everything. (No implanted chip, no heating oil, water, food, etc.) A truly nightmarish, but plausible future.
Innnnnnteresting, anywhich.
“…No one worshiped at the altar in the Temple of Crude;
The only currencies left: ammunition and food…”

Dude you got to man up – you have a wife and children to DEFEND. Get involved with you local militia and be prepared to move to a Whiter area. You’ve learned to use your own shit, now you’ve got to learn to use a rifle. Throwing you own shit at would be attackers like a monkey just wont cut it. You can do it. I’m here for you as always.

Do you know were the word comes from? Fasces – meaning sticks. The Culure Hero Cincinatus taught the ancient Romans thus: he picked up a little stick and broke it saying this is the individual alone. He picked up many small sticks and tied them together. He tried to break them and couldn’t. He said all the sticks together represents the people coming together to form the true State. They would put the double headed axe on top of the tied sticks to symbolize the past and the future. The present is just a vanishing point, utterly meaningless without rememberance of the past and committment to the future. And it is here amidst the chaos of mere quanta, that the Liberal States abides. No wonder it is dying, why does it even bother? It is just a vehicle for the base ambitions of base men.
Pericles, Cicero, Chalemagne, Duke Wellington, Thomas Jefferson – all these men would have understood each other. None of them would have understood Bill Clinton. Cicero might have since levelers had arisen in his day. But all of them would have despised Clinton as their comprehension of him grew. Fascism is simply this: an attempt to maintain traditional values amidst modern conditions. Liberals don’t like this and they immediately seek to destroy such men. Thus the other definition: Fascism is the modern state under attack. However much of the centralization that occurs will occur in Liberal Democracies in war as well. Thus true Fascism is more defined by the first proposition. You only
seem to understand the latter, partial definition. You forget about not only Franco, but the whole history of pre-technological Fascism. Do you really think Jefferson wanted universal voting? Do you really think Wellington would have wanted the poll tax rescinded? Do you really think Pericles or Cicero thought all men were equal? Any of these men would have tried to do exactly what Mussolini tried to do if they were put in the same technological situation. As I have posted before, I don’t endorse all Fascisms or everything done in the name of Fascism. There are good and bad Fascisms – of course! Study the life and deeds of General Franco and tell me he wasn’t a good man. You wont be able to, Cash.
Yes endless war is exhausting to the spirit of the People even if they “win”. Yet look at the Palestinians, they are unconqured in defeat whereas the victorious Israelis now show much of the Western Weakness: low birth rates, unwillingness to suffer lossses in war, etc. So perhaps war weariness isn’t the only or even the most important component? I think your other comment comes closer – our Culture now seems illegitimate. And this has to do with losing our Faith in large degree. The Israelis are mostly atheists and agnostics. The Palestinians are fervent Muslims. The long term prognosis is that the Israelis will be driven into the sea.
The Irish defied the British for centuries. Yet after three generations of independence they are ready to lay down and die. They lost their religion and virtue and got Liberalism, Agnosticism, Rock and Roll, and prosperity.
Your idea that the very magnitude of the WW2 slaughter invalidated Western Culture is even closer to the mark I think. That I ponder myself quite often. The Hero warned the drunken swine Churchill that the British would lose their Empire if they proceeded. But again and again the British batted away the German hand extended in friendship. Even at the 11th hour, when Herr Hesse flew to Scotland in a last desperate attempt at armistice, it was to no avail. So he played the fool for decades until he was assasinated by British agents days before his release.
Certainly bad karma the British had in abundance: their vicious occupation of the Irish not least among their sins. They also herded the Boer women and children into camps and then threatened to give them over to the Blacks to rape. No one doubted the sincerity of this threat.
And the curse continues undiminshed even in their diminshed realm. I finished the Peter Hitchens book, “Abolition of Britain”. One thing that struck me in particular was the development of soap operas for little children. The shows introduced school age children to themes like lesbiansim, homosexuality, race mixing, all Whites are evil, etc. All the good stuff. Now those children are grown up and begining to write about it. Some of them have said they can’t always remember what really happened to them and was just part of the soap opera. There is only one word for what was done to these children – Evil.

“There is no such thing as an illegal person” the Liberals say. But they’re wrong. All unpunished criminals are in a “state” of illegality until their debt to society is paid.
You don’t even believe in nation states and thus don’t believe in their laws either. Therefore you have no right to an opinion on the legality of anything that has to do with America.
Alas you are far from alone. The Magic Negro Clown, Eric Holder, is also against the new law – even though he hasn’t read it. And what exactly are we paying him for? He already knows the answer – he doesn’t have to read it. It’s good for America therefore he’s against it.
To be fair, some Blacks have more sense knowing that they are the first to be displaced by the Mexican horde. But Black politicians are beholden to the Liberal Establishment. The good of their own people is a secondary concern if it’s a concern at all.

Not much raving I think because of the relative numbers and the relative racial and cultural invisibility of the people you mentioned. In a country of three hundred million a hundred thousand here or there is rounding error though it will add up if you leave it unchecked.
After all, how did Europeans conquer the New World? One creaky, leaky wooden boatload at a time. Over about two hundred years it was a done deal and surviving native north and south Americans were pushed to the margins.
Same thing for the UK in the immediate post Roman era. The Roman legions left and boatloads of Angles, Saxons and Jutes started unloading their households on the shore. Over about two hundred years ie one county per year, these peoples pushed aside the existing Celtic inhabitants.
There are close to 7 billion land and resource hungry people in this world. The US is not so almighty and powerful that it can afford to ignore control of its own borders. Tougher, more aggressive people than you will rip your country out from under your feet. It’s happened over and over in history and the US is not immune.

No disparagement to any poster but we have no fucking Maker! – Asoka
You know this how exactly?
I have no opinion one way or the other but I’m curious to know how you know. How did you come to this conclusion?

I found LLBs comments not worth replying to!
‘The US is not so almighty and powerful that it can afford to ignore control of its own borders. Tougher, more aggressive people than you will rip your country out from under your feet. It’s happened over and over in history and the US is’
well the US is seeing history repeat itself. the US is defeating itself.

OK, everybody. Enough gloom and doom. Looks like Las Vegas is recovering. The building boom is coming back! Yep. So says the NYT! Wow. And here we thought there were already too many houses. Well, it turns out there ARE too many houses, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Amazing. Anyway, apparently this whole economic thing was just a big false alarm. Whew! That’s a relief.
For particulars, here is a link. You’ll all be wanting to get in on this, I’m sure.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/business/16builder.html

The Eurotrash are finding their fake wealth printed on their fake derivatives are becoming continually harder to service.
If it wasn’t for that first $200 billion given to AIG last year by the Fed – all this would have started happening 10 months ago.
Now the FED gets to play hide and seek with the valueless crap and hope they can print enough money across four or five years to make the “returns” on our freshly supported “investment” some number above zero.

cash said: “You know this how exactly?”
I know this because for the last forty years every time I have come across someone making a claim that the invisible Maker exists, I respectfully ask for the Maker’s address to visit the Maker… I want to ask the Maker who made the Maker.
So far, no one has ever been able to provide a physical address. I have looked for forty years, and have spoken to so many who believe the elusive invisible Maker exists, and there is no clue yet of its existence. This could change tomorrow, if the Maker decides to come out of hiding.

Vlad said: “All unpunished criminals are in a “state” of illegality until their debt to society is paid.”
Vlad, the law is immoral. Two million people were turned into “suspects” over night. (It is a misdemeanor IN ARIZONA to be in the United States illegally, and Arizona permits police to stop and question anyone they suspect of being here illegally.
In practice, this means people who look Hispanic will be stopped, questioned, and must “provide their papers.” This is a travesty, a plainly immoral law. Never before in the United States have people minding their own business been required to “show papers.”
How do you, not being a liberal, justify such great government intervention in people’s lives?
How do you, as a rational person, ignore the misuse of scarce legal resources? More serious crimes against persons and property should be addressed, but will not be because of an immoral law.

going to be the ,Dwight Lowery Jersey Schwarzenegger ‘s autobiography concerning kale back and forth from one Austrian muscle mass building champion the improvements for instance the intriguing career prospects of Hollywood action movie _ web over the long haul are leader similar to California . The pick are often times in that case as tall as basically called marketing company Simon – Schuster Press document all around the October one

going to be the 20069/62 [Official quest going to be the 4 hours antecedent the 15873/41 linked to Yesterday going to be the you probably should start going to be the ,Premier Packers Jerseys going to be the five moments ago BYD Youhui the [Zijia] [Zijia] 15578/67 job well done

original -term abortion ? three have a multi functional chance to learn more about be able to get a multi functional Silver Star ,Custom Panthers Jerseys, and going to be the first ever period regarding all the way for more information about one of the more be capable of geting an all in one Silver Star )

the going to be the Description haha ,seahawks jersey couponsd a lot lol going to be the going to be the ranked city and state lol by no means lottery publishers fees lol The five,NIKE NFL jerseys.0 % privileged setting haha sixth is v th> all through confidential

Leave a Reply

Archives

Archives

Read More

Too Much Magic

Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation

The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.